In America's chaotic political situation, multiple factors are at play. In my view, however, the deepest crisis is political—the failure of America's political institutions to "promote 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 corporate lobbies at the expense of the vast majority of citizens.
"The war of the rich against the poor"
Warren Buffett got to the bottom of the crisis in 2006. "There's a class struggle, no doubt. But it's my class - the rich class that is waging the war, and we're winning," he said.
The main battlefield is in Washington. Shock troops are the corporate lobbyists who have flocked to the U.S. Congress, federal departments and the executive branch. Ammunition is the billions of dollars spent each year on federal lobbying (an estimated $3.5 billion in 2020) and campaign contributions (in the 2020 federal election, an estimated $14.4 billion). Proponents of class warfare are corporate media led by the super-rich Rupert Murdoch.
America’s class struggle against the poor is nothing new — it was formally launched in the early 1970s and has been carried out with great efficiency over the past 40 years. For about 30 years, from 1933 to the late 1960s, the United States followed much the same path as postwar Western Europe, moving toward a social democracy. The Supreme Court opened the floodgates for corporate money to enter politics when former corporate lawyer Lewis Powell entered the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.
When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, he reinforced the Supreme Court's attack on the public welfare by cutting taxes for the wealthy, launching attacks on organized labor and eliminating environmental protections. This trajectory has not yet been reversed.
"Down with Social Democracy"
As a result, the United States has drifted away from Europe in terms of basic economic decency, welfare, and environmental controls. Europe has largely continued on a path of social democracy and sustainable development, while the United States has continued on a path characterized by political corruption, oligarchy, growing disparities between rich and poor, contempt for the environment and refusal to limit human-caused climate change. rush.
A few numbers illustrate the difference. On average, EU governments' revenue is about 45% of gross domestic product (GDP), while US government revenue as a percentage of GDP is less than 30%. As a result, European governments are able to fund universal access to health care, higher education, family support and job training, but the United States cannot ensure these services. European countries top the Global Happiness Report's life satisfaction rankings, with the United States only 19th. In 2019, life expectancy in the European Union was 81.1 years, compared with 78.8 years in the United States. As of 2019, the wealthiest 1 percent of households in Western Europe accounted for about 11 percent of national income, compared with nearly 20 percent in the United States. In 2019, the United States emitted 16.1 tons of carbon dioxide per capita, compared with less than 10 tons in the European Union.
In short, America has become a country of the rich, by the rich, and by the rich, with no political responsibility for the climate damage it causes to the rest of the world. The resulting social divisions have led to the prevalence of "deaths of despair" (including drug overdoses and suicides), declines in life expectancy (even before the COVID-19 outbreak), and rising rates of depression (especially among young people). Politically, these derangements lead in different directions—most ominously, to Trump, who offers false populism and a cult of personality. Distracting the poor with xenophobia while serving the rich, waging culture warfare and posing as a strongman may be the oldest tactics in the demagoguery playbook of politicians, but they still work surprisingly well today.
'America has not returned'
The unrest in the United States has troubling international ramifications. How can the United States lead global reform when it cannot even govern its own coherently? Perhaps the only thing uniting Americans these days is an exaggerated sense of overseas threat, mainly from China. At a time of domestic turmoil, anti-China rhetoric among politicians from both parties has risen, as if a new cold war could somehow ease domestic anxiety. Alas, the bipartisan belligerence in Washington will only lead to heightened global tensions and new dangers of conflict, not security or a real solution to any of the pressing global problems we face.
America has not returned, at least not yet. It is still struggling 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 for the United States and the world.