Back during the communist vs capitalism and free market era
Politicians were patriotic like you hope them now to be, they were worried about the rise of communism and were extremely attentive and focused and unified to making sure capitalism and free market works for the masses, that everyday westerners are enriched and have better social and health outcomes than their communist counterparts.
It did succeed to the point that Boris Yeltsin after dissolution of USSR was dumbfounded by just looking at american grocery stores that are affordable for public in comparison to the Empty shelves back at home [0]
However after the end of cold war they gave up on bipartisan, or helping society as “one nation” in almost every major western democracy. They filed every major new infrastructure build with red tape, red tape, bureaucratic nightmare. They made the economy as a pingpong ball to intentionally sabotage it for the incoming rival presidency/prime ministers, while benefiting themselves with unsustainable debt. They gave up all public infrastructure like highspeed rail, cheap transportation like Greyhound Buses across american cities, cheap housing, good housing.They gutted our manufacturing and industries, outsourced all our jobs with no better ones for those without jobs to replace them.
Now everything’s going to shit, and they wonder why people are starting to vote in populists and authoritarians, they were sold a great and good ideal of men and women, parliamentarians working together united to deliver the public with better outcomes for everyone in a democracy. Yet now they see them busy with personal enrichment, ideological wars, petty infighting, inaction on key issues.
And then they wonder why people are voting in and then tolerating objectively authoritarian dictators sometimes evil sometimes good who promise to steamroll changes as a monarch/dictator, just in hopes that they just ignore the democratic chaos and finally deliver the public something (even though often they also just personally enrich themselves or make the problems worse) we lost our prosperity, authoritarians promised us prosperity if we give away our freedoms now most of us are going to lose both at current trajectory. All because of petty infighting and laziness and lack of patriotism among politicians.
European and American society will need another cold war of ideologies with them on one side to actually defend and work for common citizens again, they wont do it until then, they’ll only do the bareminimum while continuing their petty fights and lectures as “leaders”.
I think unemployment is a poor metric if it's the only one you're looking at. Unemployment says nothing about the quality of the jobs. For example, if 90% of the country was employed in a minimum wage job, then the unemployment metric would look great but I don't know anyone who would call that a healthy economy.
10% of the population drives more than the bottom 90% of the population in consumer demand and purchase now, you think that’s normal ? This was never a thing until very recently, america’s wealth has skyrocketed one can argue the middle class is shrinking and certainly didnt gain their share of this wealth growth.
Go look at the debt levels of an average american, and realise that greater than a majority of americans dont even have $500 saved for emergencies in their account.
The unemployment rate is a sham that doesnt even count underemployment and it cleverly masks and removes people who were looking for a job, gave up hope and now are no longer looking for a job.
Adjust that medium household income statistics for purchasing power in usa across last 40 yrs, you’ll realise wages are same or have declined in real value term’s when the total wealth in country has skyrocketed.
Look there is nothing wrong with others enjoying their life but if the majority doesnt feel like they have safe equal and sustainable life sooner or later they give up on the existing system, at that point a country risks a lot of instability.
Unemployment rate has been cleverly gamed and distorted as a statistics in every major country from china to europe to usa, you name it.
Look at the median household income in terms of debt servicing, mortgage servicing, final disposable income, net wealth/assets of average income
If you make the same or lets even say a bit more money/income than mom and pop’s gen but you pay 50% of your income in housing rent or mortgage in major cities compared to only 10% back in previous gen’s times how is that better ?
And college fees have skyrocketed by 6-7x in real money terms while wages have not, thats an expensive thing too for a lot of kids.
Pensions are not a thing.
Im not saying america is completely broken, america is awesome and is equipped to do much better than most developed economies and especially compared to europe in future.
But we must admit there are problems that are fomenting troubles that can end up blowing over if we as a society dont start rapidly fixing it.
> Adjust that medium household income statistics for purchasing power in usa across last 40 yrs, you’ll realise wages are same or have declined in real value term’s when the total wealth in country has skyrocketed.
I wholeheartedly agree on the housing issue though. The cause there isn't with top politicians or some evil cabal limiting housing but it's a local problem caused by elections of NIMBY candidates and local community having too much input on permitting while only a small group of mostly of older and wealthier NIMBYs show up to those meetings.
