Is the United States of America broken?

Yes. After the financial crash I don’t see a recovery happening. I think the country will split apart. It’s been a good run though.

The government is; I’m not sure about the whole country yet.

Since 1776.

Sadly, our country seems to be changing from a democracy to a plutocracy. Over the last half-century an emerging aristocracy has created conditions that diminish the middle-class and is driving an increasing economic disparity. Their propaganda plays on rising desperation and promotes an American apartheid.

While we have not reach the state where armies of the North and South are engaged in battles, I believe that we are currently in a civil war. Unless the more progressive citizenry elects officials who support their political philosophy, civil unrest will create an American Spring that, unfortunately, will be as unsuccessful as the Arab Spring.

I’m with @janbb on this one. The government is one hot mess and “the sky is falling” media doesn’t help, but the folks that actually make up this country are solid.

It would appear that we are in a very contentios period. Government is broken and we want to hand more and more power to it. Seems a bit counter productive. Washington is driven not by what will work or what people want but rather by who will get the blame for the problems. We have high unemployment, oppressing debt, stagnant economy, and deteriorating wages.Both congress and the president are not working to fix anything but rather they are obssesed with who to blame. It’s OK if things get worse as long as the other guy gets the blame. Everyone is searching for new ideas but it is ideas about how to blame the other guy.

No the whole world is broken and fucked!

It has been broken for a while now.

Yes, since the end of World War II.

Sadly, @Jaxk is correct that government is currently more interested in mud-slinging than doing their job of running this country. The role of Big Money and having whatever decisions are not determined by partisan ideology be made by the biggest pile of money rather than the will of the people doesn’t help.

Of course, the population is deeply divided as well; you have enough zealots wanting a Christian corporocracy with no immigration that it’s hard to get anything done, especially since they hijacked a major political party and now have the power to take America hostage; something they’ve done a few times already.

We are all living in an aberration and the world is reverting to normal.
1. the economic centre line of the world is moving back east back to China where it was for thousands of years.
2. Democracy is a mere blip in the history of mankind the world was ruled by kings, emperors and aristocratic elites for far longer than it was ever democratic. I’m sure it will be again. So start practicing doffing your caps and tugging your forelocks

@basstrom188 Could you give us some citations for your claims? When was China the center of the world’s economy for thousands of years? And we’ll need some sources to judge whether history is reverting to a more restricted time, please.

And what do either of your points have to do with whether or not the US of A is in peril?

We are the richest nation on Earth still, but a few plutocrat billionaires and corporatists want all the wealth and power for themselves, and for more than 30 years now they have funded a 50 state network of falsely labeled “conservative” think tanks to come up with slogans and ideas which those incapable of critical thinking will swallow. They have built a massive propaganda machine with talk radio, far-right newspapers and their crowning achievement, Fox News to spread their propaganda and to use fear, uncertainty and doubt to befuddle voters.

So we end up with absurdities like the only way to full employment is slashing government spending, which of course means the government lays people off, buys less paper, so paper mills lay people off, buys less of this and that and the other, so all those industries lay people off. And only after we lay everyone off will we reach full employment. It’s rather like a bodybuilder trying to get really buff by figuring out how many of his muscles to cut off.

Conservative means wanting to preserve the existing order and ways. Wanting to go back to Dickensian England with workhouses, debtors prisons, and people starving and freezing in the streets is not conservative; it is radical, revolutionary regressiveness. It is not preserving what we have, it is tearing it all down for the benefit of a tiny few. The deliberate dumbing down of American education has a great deal to do with it.

No, it’s just broke.

Every good democracy throughout history only lasted 200 years before switching/evolving into something else. EVERY SINGLE ONE! We’re not broke, just in extreme need of a major overhaul.

It’s not perfect. But then, it never has been perfect, and it never will be.
Anyone who tells you it was perfect Back In The Good Old Days is deluded or trying to manipulate you. Anyone who tells you it will be perfect in the Golden Future Of The Shining City On A Hill is deluded and dangerous.

We can aspire to make the USA the best nation we can. We can identify problems and work on them. It will always be a little bit broken, and we will always be trying to fix it. We can never achieve perfection, and to give up hope of improvement on that account is the very definition of self-defeating.

This commentary is appropriate.

Please, read it in full.

@Hawaii_Jake And when I posted it on Facebook, my comment was, “So sad but so true.”

The only point I don’t agree with it that there is no fix. I don’t believe that problems we create can’t be fixed by us. We just have to find the political will, and it begins with educating the masses that the rigged, deliberately dumbed-down educational system has cheated. We can set up centers to lift poor, marginally literate patents to full literacy. Centers where parents and preschoolers can attend classes a half a day apart, then together for the rest of the day can do wonders.This cause has my attention.

@ETpro I, too, believe there is a solution. I, however, doubt the nation as a whole has the political will to do it. Plus, there are nefarious forces at play with enormous sums of money at their disposal who do not wish to see the masses educated. Such elites would much rather that we plebes remain ameliorated by Sunday football and hot dogs and beer.

@Hawaii_Jake So true, and so that’s the first thing you teach people. There have been elites trying to let them eat cake for a very long time. In the end, it’s never worked for them. It’s cost them their heads. And it will this time too. History has a way of repeating itself for those unwilling to learn it.

This is too good not to share.

I love the last sentence: “Maybe, if we ask nicely, Britain will take us back?”

@Hawaii_Jake Dang those lessons of history. Let’s remember what Britain was back when they had absolute power here.

Everything was better.

@ragingloli No thanks. Not buying any neocolonialism.

Shame on the Tea Party Republicans. They really are evil and mean people. Very scary! And this does affect the rest of the world, so we can’t consider this an internal matter of the US.

@mattbrowne If they decide to actually default on the full faith and credit of the US government, which they campaigned on doing, then you better believe it affects the rest of the world. It’s the next great depression. Why they think that’s a great idea is a mystery to me.

@ETpro It will “prove” that not letting them run things their way leads to bad things happening.

And since they’re blameless,perfect creatures, those bad things will never be their fault, not even the stuff they cause.

We have more than enough reveue coming in daily to pay our debt. The only danger we face is if Obama decides to make his point by not paying that debt. We already know that if he doesn’t get his way, he tries to make everything as painful as possible. The unknown in this equation is how painful he’s willing to make it.

the big irony is that the self proclaimed party of personal responsibility never takes responsibility for the shit they do and the things they break.
see post above for confirmation

@Jaxk The last time I checked the US Constitution, the President is not allowed to spend any money not allocated by Congress. There are laws in place that only allow spending to go to a certain level. Congress made those laws, and the President signed them. The executive does not decide how to spend. The legislature does that.

International sanctions are coercive measures adopted by a country or group of countries against another state or individual(s) in order to elicit a change in their behavior. The theory is that if the people suffer enough they will insist their Head of State be removed or change policies. Is a group of politicians shutting down our government to force their will upon our Head of State any different?

@Hawaii_Jake

The spending has already been approved. That is the whole debate, whether to curtail fiture spending or leave it where it is. The Federal Government will take in just over $3 Trillion this year and will spend about $3,7 trillion. If the ceiling is not raised the remainder of the year we will still spend about $750 billion and have a shortfall of about $175 billion. The administrative branch does not have to spend all the money approved although it tends to try very hard to do so.

@Jaxk We hang just below the Czech Republic and Estonia in tax revenue as a percent of GDP. We are way behind the rest of the developed world. We have tailored our tax system to make a few very, very rich at the expense of nearly all the rest; and we’ve done that by starving the investment that we need to make for the future. And still the GOP wants to negotiate to get more for the wealthy that support them. GOP to middle class:

GOP: “Can I have everything you own?”

Average American: “No!”

GOP: “Can I have half of all you own?”

Average American: “No!”

GOP: “Can’t I even have ⅓rd for this budget cycle, and come back for more next budget cycle?”

Average American: “No!”

GOP: “You won’t compromise.”

@ETpro

Again you isolate a number that does not reflect reality. You are trying to comapre total revenue from other countries to federal revenues for us. It doesn’t work since the state and local revenue should be included when comparing these. If you include that we are recieving around 33% of GDP in direct revenue and spending over 40%. You need to compare apples to apples if you expect to make your point. You little question and answer drill notwithstanding.

@Jaxk How does King/Snohomish county sales tax affect you? How much does it affect the federal budget?

@jerv

State taxes provide the money for schools, police, fire fighters and such. When comparing our taxes with other countries we need to compare all the various service that government provides and that means comparing all the taxes. It’s not real complicated but I suspect the Czech Republic and even Estonia have funding for schools. They just have it all in the federal budget since they don’t have the states as we do.

@Jaxk In other words, the US can only be compared to the EU and the now-defunct Soviet Union?

Other countries have subdivisions (Estonia has 15 counties), so basically, since other nations lack the added layer we have of taking 50 countries and putting them under the umbrella of a super-national union, we are organized too differently from almost everybody else to be compared directly. And I’m sure once you add in regional/local taxes, the Estonian tax rates also rise.

Not trying to be a pain; just trying to get it straight since I cannot understand quite where you’re coming from here. It seems… inconsistent.

@jerv

Not even that. I don’t know how other countries are organized nor whether they even have state county or municiple taxes. I know we do and that the federal governemt is only part of what we pay. Hell even roads are paid for by the states. The federal only has responsibility for Interstate Hiways. If you want to compare taxes in different countries, you need to compare all the taxes in both countries, not just the federal taxes. That’s why comparing taxes between countries, is so damned difficult. The ranking that @ETpro provided does not do that.

@Jaxk Fair enough. Do you know of such a comparison?

And I have to ask how WA state’s spending from WA coffers affects GDP. However, I will concede that direct comparison is sketchy simply because the US does things differently from the rest of the civilized world.

@ETpro

I’ve been trying to find a valid comparison for years. But no. I haven’t found one.

@Jaxk It would make a great research project to con some grad student into doing. :-)

@jerv Since things are working pretty well in some parts of the civilized world, we might be wise to quit the socialist name calling and crowing about American Exceptionalism and have a look at how they do it. Yeah, I know, not an easy thing to implement given all our momentum. But we could try a bit here and there, just to test if it’s workable here.

@ETpro Now THAT is idealistic! Whether it works or not, the mere fact that other nations do something means we will strive to do the opposite. Since most other nations are peaceful, and care for the non-elite…

@jerv You give up on hope, you give up on life.

@Jaxk Actually, from these stats on taxes in each of the EU member states plus the taxes collected separately to fund the EU itself, it would appear that taxes there are much higher than here. They do have cities and counties that must be funded somehow, as well. I’ll look into how we actually compare when all are totaled.

@ETpro

I have tendency to agree with you on the taxes but I’ve never been able to prove it one way or the other. I suspect that the amount of taxes below the federal level is much smaller overseas than it is here. But I don’t think, comparing top tax rates tells us much.

@Jaxk If we want to compare apples and apples, then we’d compare the EU and the US. In that case, the EU tax rate would be far lower than the US, and the various states (nation-states) in the EU would tax at a rate that appears to be significantly above that of the US, state and city taxes combined.

@ETpro

Agreed.

@Jaxk Thank you. Then I will set myself a task to work out a comparison for Massachusetts, being it’s a relatively high-tax state and one I have immediate access to.

@ETpro I’d be interested to see where Seattle compares as well. If I remember the breakdown, it’s 6.5% state sales tax (20.5% for liquor, on top of the “liter tax”), 3% sales tax for King County, and some things that other states consider non-taxable groceries elsewhere are taxed here. Federal taxes are relatively trivial by comparison.

@jerv Ha! Our former Quaker bluenoses tried a 6.5% sales tax to include liquor, and the constituents poured into the streets with pitchforks and lanterns. They had to repeal the booze tax. Those Washington state and county taxes are terrible. And regressive as hell.