Our friends often ask us about our perspective on national and international issues due to our travels, experiences and perspectives.
This is an excerpt from a recent email exchange on that topic:
There continues to be very little insight and understanding of the challenges that face the country among the American people, and even less of that rarest American social commodity: sustainable political will.
The violently polarized partisan environment in the U.S. makes intelligent conversation about the issues that are now eroding, and will inevitably destroy, the economy and the country, nearly impossible. I find it overwhelmingly likely that both partisan camps will fiddle while America burns, then blame each other for the conflagration.
Intelligent, informed discussion and debate requires investment of time and energy into informing yourself about issues. Since there are essentially no popularly available sources of non-partisan, unfiltered and undistorted news available in the U.S. , there are very, very few citizens willing to make the investment of time and energy required to educate themselves on the issues. It is so much easier to delegate governance to the ruling class and who owns them, pick up the remote and watch reality shows on television.
This is not a good formula for a sustainable society or economy.
There is nothing in the current political, social or cultural structure of the United States to suggest that proactive, intelligent, informed or constructive action will be taken on any of the looming and well-known issues that will continue to undermine the economy and bankrupt the country (health care, unfunded entitlement programs, demographics, education, immigration, etc.). Whether it is 10, 20, 30 or more years out, these issues will continue to weaken and rot the country from the inside out.
It is possible that in as little as a decade the U.S. will become like current day Africa , where everyone who can afford to has a funded, in-place escape route and destination outside the country and plenty of foreign-denominated assets in a safe haven.
Most of these observations stem from the “frog in the pot of water” phenomenon, in which the frog does not notice that the water is slowly increasing in temperature until the boiling watert kills the frog. Coming back into this country after spending a lot of time in 43 other countries on six continents, America looks like a whole lot of frogs to me.