Last Rant of the Year

Where I am now, it’s still a bit from the New Year.  2014, etc.

Well, from where I stand, it’s another year of American decay.  We are beginning to understand now, as the economy gets better, and the engine that could continues to lift America out of the ditch, that quite frankly, most of it’s People are still there, and will be there for a very long time to come.   This is our version of the “lost generation”.   Every country has one.

There are the folks in their early 50’s, years from getting a social pension,  that will never get a meaningful job again.

The life of the 60’s where just “dad”worked, mom stayed home, and dad was able to both buy a car, afford a mortgage are long fucking gone.  We all know that.  What’s increasingly becoming a reality is that mom and dad, working together, are having problems doing the same.   

What happens when they fail?

College tuition continues to go up.

American companies are now less increasingly loyal to America than ever before.  Openly so.   

People that say “corporate America needs an American middle class” are still missing the point that as long as China’s middle class is 4 times ours, who gives a crap abt what the American middle class needs?  So America continues it’s long slow burn, as the zealously ambitious people in Washington we call politicians continue to play zero sum games with the Country and the People.   Thank God I only have 2 kids to endure Future America.

China isn’t in much better shape, I know.  We all know China is anything but “transparent” about it’s issues and concerns.   Pollution, corruption, and the disparity of wealth are quite frankly old news.  Every country in the world has issues like these.   Yet the problems with China are compounded because China is so big and unwieldy.    Nobody has a clue what will happen in China next year, or next week.   And that lack of predictability scares the hell out of people.

Yet China is confident.  Growing, and unlike America, drastically better off than it was 20 years ago.   That makes me envious.   It makes me angry.  I’m not asking our leaders to grow 7% a year, but I am asking for an America that is better off for everybody generation after generation.  And it seems to me that as long as the elite classes feel they are better off, than America itself must be doing ok.  They see no problem with the other 90% being worse off than a generation ago. 

Is China a better place to live than America?   That’s besides the point.  It’s a rather silly question to ask.   Yes, China started from a rather poor pole position to start with.   It’s bound to make progress, and that’s a good thing.   Yet the obvious disparity in our 2 nations’ trajectories is worrisome.    As regards int’l trade, we care more about saving a quarter on a pair of socks at Wal-mart,  while at the same time we lose engineers to other countries. 

One can readily read online about the newest experimental American jet that costs $300 million to test, while the county I live in continues to layoff teachers due to lack of funds.   Everybody complains of “how tight” the budgets are but at the same time swear to never raise taxes.    We’re told to just bear with it, and let happen what may.  

Is this the way to run a government? 

We can “grin and bear it”, or solve the damn thing.   

Someone tell me the dumber action: American bridges and roads are only so-so, because our leaders don’t have the will to spend the money to fix them.(need that stealth destroyer!)  Meanwhile China continues to build fancy, expensive skyscrapers that will never get filled.

All this publicity about the rise and fall of two distinct countries with the common philosophy of Manifest Destiny can lead to no good.    Tension becomes the natural order of things and it cannot be denied.  (future post)

I hope next year my leaders get a clue, and stop fiddling and grab a fire hose.   I don’t want my kids to fix the hubris of my generation.