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https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/america-is-collapsing

https://theduran.com/america-is-collapsing/

America Is Collapsing

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

It’s not only that America’s GDP has, for the past 25 years, increased 181% while the world’s has increased 218%, and Russia’s has increased 730%, and China’s has increased 1,644%.

The counter to that’s representing an absolute U.S. decline might be “But, still, America’s GDP went up 181%, not down, during the past 25 years.” That’s not actually the case, however, because what one actually sees when traveling throughout the country during that time-period is clearly decline, increasing percentages of boarded-up and abandoned buildings, and also because all of that 181% growth went to only the wealthiest 5% of the population, who, in 2001 had owned 59.2% of the privately held wealth in America, and increased that percentage so that they owned 66.4% of the privately held wealth in the U.S. in 2019 (see p. 48 here), while the bottom 80%, who in 2001 owned 15.6%, owned only 11.1% of it in 2019. The billionaires who provide over 50% of all political campaign dollars in America, win an ever-increasing proportion of the private wealth, by means of controlling the Government; so, that’s the most profitable financial investment they can make: political corruption. ‘Defense’ contractors, the armaments-manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin whose main or sole market is the U.S. Government and its colonies or ‘allies’, need to and do control their Government in order to control their sales-volumes, and therefore they do control it: the billionaires who control these firms control also the federal officials who decide which foreign countries to invade, etc., in order to keep those weapons-orders growing and profitable; and, so, they control America’s foreign policies. But taxpayers take the losses from all of that, and they get no benefits from it. America is actually the least-likely country to be invaded, not because it has 900 foreign military bases but because it’s protected by three to five thousand miles of ocean to the east and west, and by having only two bordering countries, neither of which has any territorial dispute with the U.S. So, almost all of America’s military spending is pure waste, for the public, and is enormous profit for the billionaires who control America’s armaments firms.   

Of course, most Americans’ net worths, their main asset, isn’t shares of corporate stock (the main asset of the super-rich), which have historically risen much more in their value than physical assets have done, but instead are their abode, which rises far less in value than those stock-values do. So, despite the public’s rising house-prices (and rising property-taxes along with that), the assets of the billionaires (especially the armaments firms, which provide nothing to the public) increase, instead of decrease, Americans’ sense of financial insecurity, because of that enormous waste of taxpayer-funded Government resources. The University of Michigan headlined on April 15th, “Survey finds rare bipartisan agreement on housing issues among US voters” and reported that “A new poll conducted for the Financial Times and University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business finds” finds that “By a wide margin, people are more concerned about their ability to afford housing where they want to live” and that

Costs are a concern across the income spectrum. A full 60% of poll respondents earning more than $100,000 per year ranked their own ability to afford housing as one of their two-three concerns — remarkable given their high incomes — and it demonstrates the housing crisis poses problems far beyond low-income households. …

Unsurprisingly, renters, whose housing expenses tend to be less predictable than those of homeowners, were far more concerned about their own ability to afford housing where they want to live, but 64% of homeowners ranked their own ability to afford housing where they want to live as a top-three concern and 35% ranked it as their top concern. These figures suggest a lot of homeowners either want to move somewhere else but can’t afford it or are cost-burdened in their current housing arrangement. …

Housing remains one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement, and poll results are consistent with what’s seen nationwide at the state and local levels. For instance, in recent years, the Democratic-controlled legislatures in California and Massachusetts and the Republican-controlled legislatures in Montana and Utah have adopted remarkably similar measures to ease regulatory constraints on housing construction — reflecting a broad consensus that costs are a problem and the U.S. must make it easier to build needed housing.

Financial stress has been increasing instead of decreasing in America, despite the nominal 181% increase in America’s per-capita GDP over the past 25 years. And the housing stock is deteriorating instead of improving. And because of the lowering of regulatory requirements in order to keep prices down, the quality of new housing-construction will be going down instead of up. Though prices are going up, quality is going down — despite the nominal 181% increase in Americans’ wealth over the past 25 years. (And that 181% is lower than the entire world’s nominal 218% wealth-increase over the same period of time — and is vastly lower than for Russia, and especially for China.)

All of this is contrary to what is publicized in America’s national ‘news’-media, but in the shrinking number of still-surviving independent local newspapers in America the reality tends to be far less censored-out. In the local newspaper where I live, is reported that almost all local school-budget proposals are defeated, there’s increasing frequency of violence and threats by students, increasing turnover and early retirements by teachers, and poorer standardized test-scores. Nationally, America’s crime-rates peaked in 1990 and steadily declined afterwards, till 2014 (the year that Obama grabbed control over Ukraine and so started the war there), when they started increasing again, and currently, out of 52 countries ranked for crime-rates, America has the 9th-highest and is exceeded only by Uruguay, Panama, and 6 small island nations. America’s score there of 6.81 is 8.41 times higher than the median or average score of 0.81, and is far higher than that of any nation in Europe and Asia.

On 15 September 2023, I headlined “U.S. Life-Expectancy Decreased 2.51 Years Since 2014”. Now that America’s weapons-firms are thriving even more than before, Americans are dying at an earlier age than before.

So: how do America’s billionaires control the Government? Here’s how: On 8 October 2023, I headlined “Why RFK Jr. Will Announce on Monday He’ll Run as an Independent” and reported that the Democratic National Committee (DNC), like the Republican National Committee (RNC), doesn’t answer to the voters but to its megadonors, who are represented on that Committee by their lobbyists and politicians, who collectively decide whom the Presidential candidate will be — the voters in primaries and caucuses don’t. RFK Jr. had learned that the DNC already chose Biden to become its nominee; so, at that point, Kennedy could only terminate his campaign or else try to create an independent campaign, which is what he then did.

The Party Committees are private self-appointing membership corporations or clubs and have no obligations to their voters. None whatsoever. Their obligations are ONLY to America’s super-rich, who fund them.

Consequently, the U.S. is and has been an aristocracy, not a democracy. The only way that America might be able to become a democracy would be by means of a second American revolution. The first one threw out and replaced Britain’s aristocracy here. This one would throw out and replace, by a democracy, what is, and has been, America’s aristocracy here. It would overthrow not Britain’s aristocracy, but America’s own aristocracy. That would be the only way to do it, if and when the American public decide to, and organize to, do it. If it won’t be done, America will collapse altogether. First, it will continue its international decline. Then it will simply collapse.

Here’s why I think it will probably collapse: On April 12th, Gallup headlined “More Americans Say U.S. Is Not Helping Ukraine Enough” and reported that:

Sixty percent of Democrats (up by 22 percentage points) say U.S. support for Ukraine is insufficient, while 34% of independents (up by nine points) agree. At the same time, Republicans’ view is essentially unchanged, with 15% saying the U.S. is not doing enough. ...

57% of Republicans, 39% of independents and 13% of Democrats think the U.S. is doing too much. ...

Fifty-five percent of Americans think the U.S. should continue to support Ukraine in reclaiming its territory, even if that requires prolonged involvement, rather than ending the conflict as quickly as possible, even if that means ceding territory to Russia (43%). ...

A majority continues to believe that helping reclaim Ukrainian territory is worth the effort, however long it may take. Partisans hold drastically different views on the subject, with Democrats much more supportive than Republicans of helping Ukraine. This has played out among congressional Republicans as U.S. aid for Ukraine has been delayed in the House. Johnson is attempting to forge a compromise, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a dire warning that help is needed now, but Johnson could lose his position as speaker if he does not satisfy differing segments of the Republican caucus.

Ukraine borders on Russia, not on America. Ukraine can greatly endanger Russia’s national security but not America’s; and, yet, Americans favor sending $60 billion more into Ukraine to defeat Russia there — as-if Russia won’t go all-out, if necessary, in order to prevent that from happening. Who benefits from all of this? The owners of firms such as General Dynamics do. Until Obama grabbed Ukraine in 2014, there was no war there, and polls consistently showed that far more Ukrainians viewed America and its NATO as enemies than as friends and opposed joining NATO. So, clearly, the American people haven’t been informed of what was actually happening, and of why. Their view of ‘history’ is fake. The billionaires, who control both of the political Parties (and their respective media and lobbyists, and candidates), are continuing to be successful. This is not looking like a pre-revolutionary situation. It looks, instead, like continuing decline, until ultimate collapse.

As-if to prove that this is so, the U.S. House, on Friday, April 19th, voted to pass the key bill to turn President Biden’s theatrically-opposed-by-Republicans since 8 February 2024 request for an additional donation of $60 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money to Ukraine to buy U.S. weapons, into law, by a margin of 316 to 94, with 151 Republicans voting “Yea” and only 55 voting “Nay,” and (of course, since this was a Democratic proposal) 165 Democrats “Yea” and 39 “Nay.” On the Republican side, the 55 “Nays” were generally honest Republicans who were voting against the Democratic Party’s foreign policies, and the 151 “Yeas” were RINO Republicans, Republicans-In-Name-Only. Generally speaking, the House Democrats were honestly representing the predominant views of their electorate (whatever those happened to be), whereas the RINO Republicans were not, but instead probably expect to be re-elected because of the size of their campaign chests from MIC-invested billionaires and their organizations. On the Democratic side, the “Nays” were mainly representing big cities.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.