As Democracies age, they become victims of those who exploit weaknesses they build into the system, as they learn to make the democracy work for themselves at the expense of others. They lose interest in "secur(ing) the blessings of liberty" for anyone but than themselves.
Democracy in America is not the "more perfect union" envisioned two hundred years ago by the Founders. And it can be neither attained nor sustained by lesser leaders, with less integrity, and without the inspiration of God who can make "more perfect" possible.
As the decisions democracies make become more complex, they require a more educated, informed and discriminating populous to make the democracy work. But we are living in a period where, as the problems and solutions are becoming more complex, our level of education in America for the general public is declining.
Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, believed that any one who thinks a nation can be both ignorant and free (was) thinking what never was and never shall be." Quality education broadens exposure to ideas and possibilities. It liberates the mind to be creative and to judiciously examine and evaluate opinions and options. It implores the mind to the informed.
A poll of citizens prior to the 2004 presidential election suggested that 20% of Americans (1 in5) believe that Iraq used weapons of mass destruction against the United States during the Gulf War, and 33% (1 in 3) believed that the United States has found those weapons. Those likely are voters who will, as a consequence of their feliefs, support the President for in 2004. If that was a fair sampling of voters, then the President already has one-third of the votes he needs just from the uninformed. All he needed was a little more than 17% of the informed voters and he wins. Uninformed voters making decisions is one feature of democracy that make it "the worse kind of government--except for all the rest." The only solution is to provide the public with quality public education, where children are required to read and write about current issues in order to evoke their real opinions about controversial issues.
Americans have been losing jobs overseas for the past thirty years or more. According to experts, the solutions rested in technology, which was to create more jobs that it eliminated. I never quite understood how that would work. And it didn't. Then they said the low paying jobs would go overseas, but the higher paying jobs would be increased in the United States. Well, that didn't work either. First, because the public school systems in the united States did not produce enough quality students with the skills to handle (or qualify for) those high paying jobs. And rather than develop schools that could produce the desired products, industry has chosen to get the skills overseas for less money.
Part of the problem is that corporations are in business primarily to make money for shareholders. Providing jobs is secondary. Workers are forced to increase assets in 401Ks by having jobs go overseas or south of the border. Workers, in effect, lay themselves and fellow worker off. We can't blame CEO because they just work there. And their job descriptions, as presently defined, involves making as much money as possible, not creating as many jobs as possible.
At some point, America must come to grips with the fact that our average standard of living relative to the rest of the world is--and must be--on the decline. It may even be declining relative to what it once was. Right now, that average is increasingly an average of more those who have too much, those who have too little, and a declining center. In a working democracy, that average should be an expanding center.
Standards of living must decline. We must build smaller homes, small enough to only comfortably accommodate family members. The wealthy must stop building homes that are too expensive for future generations to afford. We must cease establishing high standards of living in America that people in the undeveloped world seek to attain at the expense of the middle-class jobs. We are motivating them to better educate themselves, even a Republicans do all they can to not educate and miseducate certain fellow Americans--or teammates.
Ofter jobs could have been saved id experienced workers worked fewer hours or approved across-the board cuts in pay. Workers could have saved more money during good times so they could afford to work fewer hours or at a lower rate of pay during tough times. Standard of living would be based on tough time salaries, prevent preventing workers from incurring excess debt which in the future could cost co-workers jobs. (Workers also would have kept their skills current.)
The federal government should have a greater role in overseeing the relationships and agreements between corporations and employees. There should be either job security or income security. The government, corporations and workers must contribute financially to guaranteeing either jobs or incomes until workers can find jobs with comparable incomes, or unconditionally supplement lesser incomes until better jobs can be found. While businesses must serve the interest of their investors, government must serve the interest of all Americans a strike a proper balance.
The lack of sufficient jobs caused by jobs going overseas is exaggerated by the fact that increasingly husbands and wives have two good-paying jobs, leaving other homes with either poorly paying or no jobs. The middle class is shrinking because many families are moving into the upper class--becoming rich, if not wealthy. In many cases these are achieved by pushing others from the middle class into the category of working poor, and from working poor to just poor.
Most middle class and poor Americans have little hope of becoming better educated without extraordinary self-motivation and significant help from others. This lessen their desires and expectations that the US economy will satisfy their increasing desire for both bigger things and need more than they can afford.
Americans have collaborated to establish a less perfect union.
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