Will the United States ever fail?

My heart hopes no and my brain says yes.

All systems degrade over time and eventually break down, Nation-States notwithstanding, and they tend to follow a pattern as they do it. I've written a bit about it on another post here somewhere and I might try to link to it at some point.

But I can't think of a better way to set up a robust self-sustaining system of governance or how to implement it. Taking an oath to support and defend the framework for this one seemed like the thing to do. So I hope we can keep it going a few lifetimes more.

History has already taught that all great empires get knocked off the mountain top.

Fail or be overrun by Mexico and Islam that the current admin is promoting?

We've fallen from the top credit rating. Actual unemployment is well into double digits. Debt has more than doubled in last 8 years. The hate mongering in Hollywood and top govt admin...
I hope we start electing some people with a backbone and a bit of common sense.

We have been the greatest nation on earth, but greed has inherently veered our course off the path of continued greatness.

We have a military that can protect our nation like none on this planet, we have a powerful industrial base (when utilized right), we have a constitution that works (that is the envy of the rest of the planet - that has given us the basis for our growth), and the ingenuity to create a better way of life for not just our own people but for everyone.

Our infra-structure made this nation into the first “Super Power’ – unfortunately, we have let this structure become neglected and in disrepair (our power grid is failing, our roads, rails and bridges are degrading, etc.). If we continue to keep a blind eye to this situation we will have thrown away all that has been done and given to us by our predecessors.

In order to change this situation around we should do a few things in the short term (until we get to the point where we have the ability to offer help again) – we should cut all foreign aid (put this money back into our country’s infra-structure rebuild) also, to all the U. S. corporations that have moved operations out of our country to evade paying taxes and utilizing (pretty much a slave type) labor force – institute a tax and/or tariff – so that they are paying the same as if they were still here in the CONUS.

These two changes would put a tremendous amount of people to work in the U.S. and pump needed dollars back into the economy (and the other added benefit would be building our infra-structure back to the shape that made us a ‘Super Power’ to start with).

If we don’t fix our infra-structure, and don’t take care of our mentally ill, homeless, and low income members of our society – I fear we will follow the path of other great nations in history (one example: the Roman empire). Our nation has been slowly pushing the ‘middle class’ out of existence - if this doesn’t change we will wind up with only a lower class and upper class situation. This type of situation never works very well for very long.

But, in general we are a nation of great thinkers and doers – we just need to get refocused on what is important (taking care of our people) and what is needed to be done to change our current state of affairs and put us back on the road to being the ‘shining gleam of hope’ that our citizens and the rest of the world needs.

With two daughters, I have to be optimistic. Our education system keeps me very pessimistic though. Every day, my girls come home from school with a new common core surprise for me and I have to teach them the same things again in a way that make sense. I look around me and see the complete lack of financial discipline and personal responsibility around me. Everything is someone else's fault. When I had my own soldiers to lead, I taught money management and basic facts of life like buying a car but these things were looked down upon and I was forced to do these things on my own time. If one of my soldiers wanted to buy a car, I took him car shopping and personally walked him through the steps of negotiating with the salesman and finance personnel and how to research banks and interest rates and terms.

My point is that if our own soldiers are not being taught these things and they are expected to magically know these things, they will fail. Their leadership mostly believe counseling statements are the cure for everything like motrin. The same goes for the rest of our society. We are expected to know things we are not being taught and we are therefore failing. We don't know what we don't know.

Entire curricula are being stripped from our education systems and we are standing by and not tracking any of it. The same happened to us while our folks stood by believing everything was the same quality they had.

My advise is if you want to see what the status of our country is and where it is going, don't worry about the headlines. Read the financial section, follow the money, there is a wealth of knowledge in the money trail. Never stop asking why.

I don't agree that everything is doom and gloom currently, or that the past was some noble, glorious ideal we should return to.

That said, every great empire has come to an end eventually. The question is, what form will the failure take? Will it be a spectacular, total collapse, as the Roman empire or Persian empire did? Or will it be a slower rolling back, as happened to Great Britain? Britain still exists, but it is no longer an empire spanning the globe. China still exists, but they are far from the height of their power. Even Russia still exists, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

My guess is that America will continue to exist, but it is unlikely we will continue to be the #1 global power forever.

I love Jeff Daniels monologue in "The Newsroom" about how America is no longer the greatest country in the world. I think he makes many, valid points, and that many of us are just willing to write off these criticism as "haters" and "traitors", rather than try to solve the problems he points out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHSXUS0_1c

Yeah I think we are in danger. Its not ISIS. We have a society that is becoming more complacent and narcissistic. Our legislators make laws that benefit the few powerful and not the nation as a whole. We are hypocritical, because on one end the spectrum we talk about personal responsibility and consequences, yet on the other end we reward failure by bailing out large companies because they are too big to fail. If I fail at my job I am fired with no severance. If a CEO fails they get a multi-million dollar payout and are still allowed fringe benefits from the company they left. We believe in free market competition as long as the competition does not take the revenue stream away from company X, by protectionist policies. We are seeing more underemployment, and that people are longer considered a valued resource. The country as a whole treats politics like a football game as in I vote for my team no matter what, when we should be firing our long term leadership that is failing us. Both sides are equally guilty voting policies that do not benefit the masses. They get away with it because they throw fringe issues that are irrelevant with more important ones that need to be addressed now. But the average dolt bites off on it every time. A few people in this country are doing what they can to benefit themselves in the short term despite that it will ruin us long run.

Unless the country wakes up and starts recognizing the common goal of the nation we are in a spiral dive accelerating to the ground.

Done with rant!

I see us currently on a path to failure. As long as people can keep voting to keep their pockets full, they will, as will the next generation, and the following...and it will keep getting worse with each next generation. We do not have the illegal immigrant issue here because there is work, it is because of all the free stuff they can get.

We AS A NATION need to quit with the BS, stop sending billions of dollars to countries that want to kill us, and start working on the social, economic, and structural issues we have HERE. We need to get to the inner cities, show these families that there IS a way for a better life, but it takes work. We need to help companies grow, instead of making them spend their profit on stupid regulation and oversight. We need to move some of the WAY over paid government jobs back to the private sector to help promote growth. We need to get rid of redundant government agencies and unconstitutional agencies. Need to downsize and force efficiency at many others.

We currently have an awesome system of government that prevents mob-rule. We have more freedom than pretty much the rest of the world. But as long as we keep this broken and corrupt 2 party system in power, we are going to keep declining, one step at a time.

Part of me really hopes we do so we can rebuild from scratch. The country of America is in trouble and has made of mess of itself, but the concept/idea of America is still strong in the hearts of patriots and will hopefully never die!

I say "On a path to failure" if for no other reason than that no nation, state, or empire is exempt from the course of history. There is no empire on earth that has lasted forever. Ours won't be an exception. If we remember these facts and stay vigilant, we'll last longer than if we don't, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.