America Is Headed Toward Collapse (opens in new tab)

- The US is, on average, highly anti-intellectual and proud of it.

- Spends an unsustainable amount on the military-industrial complex more than the rest of the world combined.

- Lacks health insurance, healthcare, and mental healthcare for all as a human right.

- Is far more dangerous than any Western European country. The city I live in doesn't have police response for nonviolent crimes until 36-48 hours later, if at all.

- Millions of homeless people live on the street. (The true number is far higher than the official estimate.)

- A hundred million Americans are furious, barely surviving, and frequently quick to anger over anything.

- Politically divided.

- 30-40% of the country would rather the whole thing burn down than for things to get better.

- Routine acts of mass murder don't happen in a functional society again, and again, and again.

- Suicide by habits of despair.

- Doddering and corrupt politicians who lack a vision and ambitious project milestones.

- Already had one dumb insurrection and can't elect a SOTH.

America is on the path to another Civil War, but it will take 0-35 years to come to a head in such a fashion. It won't be invaded or replaced, but it may dissolve into 2-3 alliances of states. There is unlikely to be violence necessarily because leftists lack the arsenal the far-right has, and the state has a far greater capabilities than any private party.* Decline is a slow-boiling frog that goes from reliable postal mail and public park water fountains to haphazard, inconsistency and privatized commons HOAs. The bullshit just piles higher and deeper.

----

* The edge-cases are individuals in 2 a.-friendly states with privately-owned M114 155mm towed artillery, privately-owned Gatling guns (antique and modern), and surprisingly privately-owned 40 mm Bofors L/60 anti-aircraft autocannon with power traverse pre-treaty (each explosive or incendiary shell has to have an DD NFA tax stamp [and usually the permission of the local sheriff] while regular rounds do not). There is a semi-yearly gathering in Arizona to shoot NFA arms. I doubt there are any privately-owned LAWs, Hellfires, hypersonic missiles, Longbow Apaches, or counterbattery radars.

The US has a lot going for it, but it's got one thing, the only thing that leads to polticial upheaval, that's bad: the population does not view itself as one people, or even as disparate allied peoples. We have been propagandized to hate each other. Check all the boxes you like, this fact alone has one outcome.

China would like a word. A developing country with a highly educated population with a military that has achieved nuclear capacity....that also has developed trade relations with practically every other major economy on the planet. While their style of governance might be somewhat blunt and brutalist, it's also lifted a billion people out of destitute poverty. That builds tremendous trust internally.

The USA, on the other hand is trying to recover from having a perpetually bankrupt illiterate spray-tanned wannabe mafia Don pedophile fraudster as their previous president, who very well could get another chance at the Presidency. That president lost the popular vote by several million votes yet still got power. He's been elevated to the status of God by his followers and political party, and is untouchable to the point where he admits serious crimes and walks away a free man to this very day. Oh yeah, 70+ million people want him back in power.

We're not in crisis? Yeah, no. This is real.

You sure about that? The current political climate has destroyed neighborhoods and families with how divisive each side has become.

Not really, not all countries fall due to external problems. Some crumble from within.

US has states with economies of diverging interest (e.g. carbon focused countries), diverging economies, and lots of civil unrest.

> I would like to see some citations for this because there are many things that make up quality of life, and many ways to measure them.

There's that famous graph that shows flat real wages from the 70s onward for most people, and very well-known problems with extremely important goods like healthcare access and housing.

Sure, most Americans (even poor ones) have gotten significantly larger and higher-resolution televisions and gizmos like cell phones during that time, but I think those things are actually pretty marginal (and perhaps even negative), from a quality of life perspective.

Those have low inequality in personal income, plus a strong social security net. USA lacks both of these characteristics.

(tl;dr of the latter: the high are only ever overthrown by the middle, who —no matter what their ideology may claim as to the low— merely displace, becoming the new high)

They siphon wealth from middle class, who has less and less wealth to sustain itself and prop up poor.

The finance sector is not helping either as it generally doesnt create anything either + markets and ever more abstracted tools that create usless 'middle man' that again siphon wealth without creating anything.

And on top of that you have corporate media that are doing everything to prevent class war, by creating cultural and propagating wars.

This is putting immense strain on middle class who are tasked with pushing the wheels of the system, with less and less each year.

- General impoverishment.

- Hide desirable things from the pesky impoverished.

- Emptying of hearts (they should be empty:)

- Destroy ambition.

- Remove education, promote ignorance.

- Intellectuals remain aloof, their natural supremacy is assured.

Obviously a good strategy for success and human flourishing.