American expert article "The United States has become a country where the rich have, the rich rule, and the rich enjoy"
American expert article "The United States has become a country where the rich have, the rich rule, and the rich enjoy"
Saudi Arabian "Arab News" website published on December 21 Jeffrey Sachs, professor of Columbia University, director of the University's Sustainable Development Center, and chairman of the United Nations Sustainable Development Action Network, titled "The United States has become the rich, the rich, and the rich." A country for the rich" article stated that a year ago, Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump in the election, but the prospects for the United States are still ambiguous. It is not easy to diagnose exactly what has put the United States in such a predicament that it has instigated the "Trump movement".
In the chaotic political situation in the United States, multiple factors are at play. In my view, however, the deepest crisis is political—the failure of America's political institutions to "advance the public good" as promised by the U.S. Constitution. For 40 years, American politics has become an insider's game, favoring the super-rich and the corporate lobby at the expense of the vast majority of citizens.
Warren Buffett nailed the heart of the crisis in 2006. He said: "There is no doubt that there is a class struggle. But it is my class - the wealthy class - that is waging the war, and we are winning.
America’s class struggle against the poor is nothing new—it was formally launched in the early 1970s and has been carried out with remarkable efficiency over the past 40 years. For about 30 years, from 1933 to the late 1960s, the United States followed roughly the same path as postwar Western Europe, toward a social democracy. When former corporate lawyer Lewis Powell entered the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for corporate money to enter politics.
Ronald Reagan, who became president in 1981, reinforced the Supreme Court's assault on the public welfare by cutting taxes for the rich, launching attacks on organized labor and rolling back environmental protections. This trajectory has not yet reversed.
As a result, the United States has drifted away from Europe in terms of basic economic decency, welfare, and environmental control. While Europe by and large continues on a path of social democracy and sustainable development, the United States is on a path characterized by political corruption, oligarchy, widening wealth inequality, contempt for the environment, and refusal to limit human-induced climate change rush.
In short, America has become a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, with no political responsibility for the climate damage it has caused the rest of the world. The resulting social fragmentation has led to a prevalence of "deaths of despair" (including drug overdoses and suicides), a decline in life expectancy (even before COVID-19), and an increase in rates of depression (especially among young people). Politically, these anomalies lead in different directions — most ominously, to a Trump who offers false populism and a cult of personality. Distracting the poor with xenophobia while serving the rich, waging culture warfare and strongman posturing may be the oldest tricks in the demagogue’s playbook, but they still work surprisingly well today.
The turmoil in the United States has troubling international implications. How can America lead global reform when it cannot even govern its own country in a coherent manner? Perhaps the only thing uniting Americans today is an overstretched sense of threat abroad, chiefly from China. Amid the turmoil at home, politicians of both parties have turned anti-China tones higher, as if a new Cold War could somehow ease domestic anxieties. Alas, the bipartisan belligerence in Washington will only lead to heightened global tensions and new dangers of conflict, rather than security or real solutions to any of the pressing global problems we face.
America has not returned, at least not yet. It is still grappling with decades of political corruption and social neglect. The outcome remains highly uncertain, and the outlook for the next few years is fraught with peril, both for the United States and the world.
Saudi Arabian "Arab News" website published on December 21 Jeffrey Sachs, professor of Columbia University, director of the University's Sustainable Development Center, and chairman of the United Nations Sustainable Development Action Network, titled "The United States has become the rich, the rich, and the rich." A country for the rich" article stated that a year ago, Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump in the election, but the prospects for the United States are still ambiguous. It is not easy to diagnose exactly what has put the United States in such a predicament that it has instigated the "Trump movement".
In the chaotic political situation in the United States, multiple factors are at play. In my view, however, the deepest crisis is political—the failure of America's political institutions to "advance the public good" as promised by the U.S. Constitution. For 40 years, American politics has become an insider's game, favoring the super-rich and the corporate lobby at the expense of the vast majority of citizens.
Warren Buffett nailed the heart of the crisis in 2006. He said: "There is no doubt that there is a class struggle. But it is my class - the wealthy class - that is waging the war, and we are winning.
America’s class struggle against the poor is nothing new—it was formally launched in the early 1970s and has been carried out with remarkable efficiency over the past 40 years. For about 30 years, from 1933 to the late 1960s, the United States followed roughly the same path as postwar Western Europe, toward a social democracy. When former corporate lawyer Lewis Powell entered the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for corporate money to enter politics.
Ronald Reagan, who became president in 1981, reinforced the Supreme Court's assault on the public welfare by cutting taxes for the rich, launching attacks on organized labor and rolling back environmental protections. This trajectory has not yet reversed.
As a result, the United States has drifted away from Europe in terms of basic economic decency, welfare, and environmental control. While Europe by and large continues on a path of social democracy and sustainable development, the United States is on a path characterized by political corruption, oligarchy, widening wealth inequality, contempt for the environment, and refusal to limit human-induced climate change rush.
In short, America has become a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, with no political responsibility for the climate damage it has caused the rest of the world. The resulting social fragmentation has led to a prevalence of "deaths of despair" (including drug overdoses and suicides), a decline in life expectancy (even before COVID-19), and an increase in rates of depression (especially among young people). Politically, these anomalies lead in different directions — most ominously, to a Trump who offers false populism and a cult of personality. Distracting the poor with xenophobia while serving the rich, waging culture warfare and strongman posturing may be the oldest tricks in the demagogue’s playbook, but they still work surprisingly well today.
The turmoil in the United States has troubling international implications. How can America lead global reform when it cannot even govern its own country in a coherent manner? Perhaps the only thing uniting Americans today is an overstretched sense of threat abroad, chiefly from China. Amid the turmoil at home, politicians of both parties have turned anti-China tones higher, as if a new Cold War could somehow ease domestic anxieties. Alas, the bipartisan belligerence in Washington will only lead to heightened global tensions and new dangers of conflict, rather than security or real solutions to any of the pressing global problems we face.
America has not returned, at least not yet. It is still grappling with decades of political corruption and social neglect. The outcome remains highly uncertain, and the outlook for the next few years is fraught with peril, both for the United States and the world.
2023-05-04 10:01
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