According to last month’s employment numbers and housing
prices across the country, it looks like the U.S. economy is hurting bad.  The truth of the matter is that the
picture is even grimmer than what is portrayed by these reports. The majority
of Americans are starving, our interstate highway system is crumbling, research
institutions and state universities are deteriorating, NASA is dying, and the
internet is lagging.

Why is America running on three flat tires? Well, the sphere
of politics today is much more about short-term, sound-bite ideas than
substantive, long-term, nuanced solutions. Nothing is getting done because
every politician is so concerned and so obsessed with winning politically. A
great deal of trust has been lost because politicians are not clear to
themselves and to their constituents. That trust was part of the social
contract between individuals and their representatives — now in tatters with
lost pensions and lost jobs. The sense of community and common will has been
washed away. Our representatives are held hostage to vested interests and
economic activities less suited for the changed world.

In 2050, the world’s population is estimated to plateau around
9.5 billion and resource crises are expected to get worse over time. Thus it is
disheartening that there are those who still talk about growth-based economies
as if they are ordained by God. Unconstrained growth is not the solution, it is
the problem. We need to manage what we have, ensure the quality of life of all
Americans and find a way to live sustainably. More importantly, banking on past
recession experience will not work because this meltdown has a global component
to it. Furthermore, the bargain made with our form of capitalism, where a
rising tide that used to lift most boats, increasingly does not work in this
globalized economy with resulting sharp social/class/political divisions.

Moreover, the American populace and educational institutions
hardly agree on the causes of the problems and how to solve them. The media
confuses and entertains more than it informs the citizenry. It feeds on
viewership, but not the truth. To call China an adversary may feed the media’s
need for viewership, but the Chinese are doing a heck of a good job in
promoting their goals with their system of hybrid command and market driven
economy. The sour attitude of some people doesn’t address the fact that China
is doing something right, and evidently we aren’t.

America went from being a net creditor to a net debtor. In
the international export market, its global competitiveness has decreased and
its share of production has dropped. Our government is no longer able to see
that it has become increasingly materialistic, reducing every undertaking to a
material profit. For instance, public education is looked upon as a business;
not a service, a public good. Our politicians keep blaming “illegal
immigration” and “China” for the problems with America, but yet
they can spend millions of dollars on two illegal wars, and give Israel
billions of dollars while cutting millions of dollars from public welfare
budgets.

Further, as the majority of Americans struggle to get by,
U.S. corporations are reporting record high profits and CEOs are receiving
record-breaking bonuses. At the same time, our government rewards these wealthy
corporations with tax incentives and makes them hardly pay any federal income
tax as compared to the average Joe on Main Street.

 Corporations
are learning that it is more profitable to overwork existing employees without
raising salaries than it is to hire new ones. The presence of a large
unemployed class motivates workers to accept any kind of abuse to keep their
jobs. The Liberal successes of the past — the 40 hour week, the 8 hour day,
workplace safety, and laws against sexual harassment are being dismantled by
global corporations and their handmaidens in Congress.

The present form of our democratic government is not only
inefficient but also unfair. America has the highest inequality of resources in
the industrialized world where the super rich are “buying-off”
politicians and making themselves even richer regardless of the welfare of the
larger community. It has reached the point where the the wealth of the 400
richest Americans is more than the combined net worth of 50% of the U.S.
population.  In other words, 155
million people combined have less wealth than the 400 richest people in the
U.S. Do we really want an aristocracy?

Yet with all the aforementioned being true, we as Americans
often make our greatest strides from the depths of adversity. Out of the chaos
and dysfunction perhaps there will emerge another movement to combat the
dysfunction — a moderate political movement — a mild mannered new age of reason.
I’m optimistic.

The writer is Professor of
Interdisciplinary Studies at The University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio.