James
There is an obvious fallacy in your reasoning that I should not have to explain. The US is a wealthy society, but not everyone in it is wealthy. GDP per capita has doubtless grown over a generation, but (check me on this, Doug) my understanding is that real wages are flat or down, while inequality has grown a great deal.
We have what, 40 million in poverty as the ungenerous official figures reckon poverty, more than 40 million without health insurance -- unlike y'all, we don't have national health, and virtually everyone is insecure in his or her job. Pensions have been practically abolished, leaving people to save for their own retirement by investing in the stock market, the practical effect of which is that most people have no retirement savings.
The current expectation is that Social Security, or on-the-cheap provision for the elderly,a long with of "entitlement" benefits for medical care, will be drastically reduced or abolished.
In a society where education is increasingly necessary for any economic advancement as well-paid unionized manufacturing jobs have disappeared (manufacturing? unions? Hah!), higher education has gone through the roof so that even fairly affluent people like myself blanch at the prospect of ponying up about a quarter million dollars per child over four years for a university degree.
The benefits of the US's increase in wealth and productivity over the last 30 or so years have accrued to a very tiny minority, not including even the upper 5% or upper 1% of the population, but maybe only the upper.01%. Certainly not the lower 60% or probably even the lower 90%. Doug, am I exaggerating?
The upshot is that your impressions based on your visit do not reflect economic reality, and anyone on the left, I think, should see the point.
--- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Quoth Doug:
>
> ""Terrorized" is too strong a word, but American
> society is filled
> with anxiety and fear - fear of homelessness and
> failure, fear of the
> terrorists, fear of all those Mexicans crossing the
> border. Maybe
> you've been away too long, but it's one of our
> foundational
> principles of social organization."
>
> I was going to say, "poor you!" but then I
> remembered that you live in the
> wealthiest society on earth. And the last time that
> I visited, I seem to
> remember that it was very pleasant indeed, not least
> for the excellent
> company.
>
> There is something of a culture of fear in the UK,
> too, I suppose. But for
> the most part the fears that motivate Britons are
> imaginary scares like East
> European criminals, middle eastern terrorists,
> predatory paedophiles, Avian
> Flu, 'human-BSE', autism-inducing MMR vaccines, the
> heterosexual AIDS
> pandemic, and so on and so forth. Quite why they are
> prey to these
> nightmares is an interesting question.
>
> In terms of measurable social goods, you would be
> very hard put to show that
> Britain, like the rest of Europe, China, Russia, and
> I suspect the US too,
> is not much better off than it was a generation ago.
>
>
>
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