How America Can Rise Again- Interesting Atlantic Article

[stjaba]

The basis gist of the article is that the US is as strong as ever culturally, but the US political system is getting weaker and is antiquated.

Article is way too long to post, but here's a link and quote:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201001/american-decline

We might hope for another Sputnik moment—to be precise, an event frightening enough to stimulate national action without posing a real threat. That kind of "hope" hardly constitutes a plan. In 2001, America endured an event that should have been this era's Sputnik ; but it wasn't. It doesn't help now to rue the lost opportunity, but there is no hiding the fact that it was an enormous loss. What could have been a moment to set our foreign policy and our domestic economy on a path for another 50 years of growth—as Eisenhower helped set a 50-year path with his response to Sputnik —instead created problems that will probably take another 50 years to correct.

That's yesterday. For tomorrow, we really have only two choices. Doing more, or doing less. Trying to work with our flawed governmental system despite its uncorrectable flaws, or trying to contain the damage that system does to the rest of our society. Muddling through, or starving the beast.

Readers may have guessed that I am not going for the second option: giving up on public efforts and cauterizing our gangrenous government so that the rest of society can survive. But the reason might be unexpected. I have seen enough of the world outside America to be sure that eventually a collapsing public life brings the private sector down with it. If we want to maintain the virtues of private America, we must at least try on the public front too. Rio, Manila, and Mexico City during their respective crime booms; Shanghai in the 1920s and Moscow in the 1990s; Jakarta through the decades; the imagined Los Angeles of Blade Runner —these are all venues in which commerce and opportunity abounded. But the lack of corresponding public virtues—rule of law, expectation of physical safety, infrastructure that people can enjoy or depend on without owning it themselves—made those societies more hellish than they needed to be. When outsiders marvel at today's China, it is for the combination of private and public advances the country has made. It has private factories and public roads; private office buildings and public schools. Of course this is not some exotic Communist combination. The conjunction of private and public abundance typified America throughout its 20th-century rise. We had the big factories and the broad sidewalks, the stately mansions and the public parks. The private economy was stronger because of the public bulwarks provided by Social Security and Medicare. California is giving the first taste of how the public-private divorce will look—and its historian, Kevin Starr, says the private economy will soon suffer if the government is not repaired. "Through the country's history, government has had to function correctly for the private sector to flourish," he said. "John Quincy Adams built the lighthouses and the highways. That's not 'socialist' but 'Whiggish.' Now we need ports and highways and an educated populace." In a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, it should have been possible to build all those things, in a contemporary, environmentally aware counterpart to the interstate-highway plan. But it didn't happen; we've spent the money, incurred the debt, and done very little to repair what most needs fixing.

Our government is old and broken and dysfunctional, and may even be beyond repair. But Starr is right. Our only sane choice is to muddle through. As human beings, we ultimately become old and broken and dysfunctional—but in the meantime it makes a difference if we try. Our American republic may prove to be doomed, but it will make a difference if we improvise and strive to make the best of the path through our time—and our children's, and their grandchildren's—rather than succumb.

"I often think about how we would make decisions if we knew we would wake up the next day and it would be 75 years later," Cullen Murphy, author of Are We Rome?, told me. "It would make a huge difference if we could train ourselves to make decisions that way." It would. Of course, our system can't be engineered toward that perspective. Politicians will inevitably look not 75 years into the future but one election cycle ahead, or perhaps only one news cycle. Corporations live by the quarter; cable-news outlets by the minute. But we can at least introduce this concept into public discussion and consider our issues and choices that way.

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah, Fallows wants to ditch the Senate and the electoral college.  The first might have the delightful effect of eliminating farm subsidies but I don't know if it would necessarily increase the time horizon of elected officials.

[grumbler]

Yes, the trend that has lasted since the end of the post-WW2 use monopoly continues.

The moaning about it won't fix it; relative US decline is not only inevitable, it is good for the US citizen.  A more affluent world is a world with more money to spend on what the US produces so efficiently.

I bet Fallows doesn't talk about visiting Chinese universities and discovering PhD students rote-memorizing things like the "rules of memory."  That wouldn't fit into his Chicken Little scenario.

[stjaba]

Yes, the trend that has lasted since the end of the post-WW2 use monopoly continues.

The moaning about it won't fix it; relative US decline is not only inevitable, it is good for the US citizen.  A more affluent world is a world with more money to spend on what the US produces so efficiently.

I bet Fallows doesn't talk about visiting Chinese universities and discovering PhD students rote-memorizing things like the "rules of memory."  That wouldn't fit into his Chicken Little scenario.

Did you read the article? One of his points is that one of the US's greatest strengths is its higher education system, especially compared to China.

"Americans often fret about the troops of engineers and computer scientists marching out of Chinese universities. They should calm down. Each fall, Shanghai's Jiao Tong University produces a ranking of the world's universities based mainly on scientific-research papers. All such rankings are imprecise, but the pattern is clear. Of the top 20 on the latest list, 17 are American, the exceptions being Cambridge (No. 4), Oxford (No. 10), and the University of Tokyo (No. 20). Of the top 100 in the world, zero are Chinese.

"On paper, China has the world's largest higher education system, with a total enrollment of 20 million full-time tertiary students," Peter Yuan Cai, of the Australian National University in Canberra, wrote last fall. "Yet China still lags behind the West in scientific discovery and technological innovation." The obstacles for Chinese scholars and universities range from grand national strategy—open economy, closed political and media environment—to the operational traditions of Chinese academia. Students spend years cramming details for memorized tests; the ones who succeed then spend years in thrall to entrenched professors. Shirley Tilghman said the modern American model of advanced research still shows the influence of Vannevar Bush, who directed governmental science projects during and after World War II. "It was his very conscious decision to get money into young scientists' hands as quickly as possible," she said. This was in contrast to the European "Herr Professor" model, also prevalent in Asia, in which, she said, for young scientists, the "main opportunity for promotion was waiting for their mentor to die." Young Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Dutch know they will have opportunities in American labs and start-ups they could not have at home. This will remain America's advantage, unless we throw it away.""

[Jacob]

Didn't read the article, but I concur with the summary that culturally the US is still strong and dynamic; there does appear to be a bit of a rot in the public discourse and how government function, but it's nothing that can't be fixed or managed.  If the American population and political class could find a common project to unite behind and turn down the dial on partisan bickering just a few notches then the US is golden IMO.

[Fate]

How dare he compare the Senate to rotten boroughs. We would do better with a House of Lords? Hang that man for treason! :USA:

[Viking]

To have a fall you need to fall below the level of some competitor.

[Martinus]

There is always a debate whether a body like the US Senate (the so-called "house of reflection") is necessary in a democracy or not. But if you decide to have it, it makes sense not to elect it in the same way as the lower house, as otherwise it becomes a little more than a rubber stamp.

Otoh, doing away with the electoral college is sensible - the current system is really bizarre, anti-democratic and has no rationale whatsoever.

[grumbler]

Did you read the article? One of his points is that one of the US's greatest strengths is its higher education system, especially compared to China.

Well, I would have bet poorly then, wouldn't I? 

No, I didn't read the article.  Too long, and the summary didn't entice me to read more.n  Just reading "our government is old and broken and dysfunctional, and may even be beyond repair" made me retch.  ALL governments are old and broken and dysfunctional, unless they are new and broken and dysfunctional; that is the nature of organizations as large as governments.

[grumbler]

Otoh, doing away with the electoral college is sensible - the current system is really bizarre, anti-democratic and has no rationale whatsoever.

There is absolutely no reason to do away with the EC, and many reasons to keep it.  All the fixing needed is that EC delegates from each state be distributed proportional to the popular vote in each state.

[Ed Anger]

No Senate? Who will keep the local systems in line?

[Valmy]

There is absolutely no reason to do away with the EC, and many reasons to keep it.  All the fixing needed is that EC delegates from each state be distributed proportional to the popular vote in each state.

I guess I don't see the compelling reasons for or against the EC.  Only two times in our history has the EC been relevent and in both cases I fail to see what value it really added.  I mean unless you consider Hayes and Bush worth it.

Since every other time the guy with the most EC votes also had the most popular votes what difference does it make?

[Admiral Yi]

In my mind the main argument against doing away with the electoral college is the effort it would take.

[grumbler]

I guess I don't see the compelling reasons for or against the EC.  Only two times in our history has the EC been relevent and in both cases I fail to see what value it really added.  I mean unless you consider Hayes and Bush worth it.

Since every other time the guy with the most EC votes also had the most popular votes what difference does it make?

The arguments in favor are finality (the margin of error is much smaller for five hundred votes than eighty million votes) and the fact that it exists as part of the Constitution.

The argument against bis that foreigners don't understand it and post absurd comments on internet discussion boards whining about its existence.

[Valmy]

The arguments in favor are finality (the margin of error is much smaller for five hundred votes than eighty million votes) and the fact that it exists as part of the Constitution.

I definitely agree that there is no compelling reason to go through all the pain to change the constitution to fix what I consider a non-issue.