America’s Steep Decline Amid Unprecedented Riches

 

“Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga. [above right]), who supports the White House’s federal aid freeze possibly impacting school lunch programs, suggested in an interview that children [even in elementary school] get jobs, including working at McDonald’s, to pay for their lunches.” 

 USA Today 1/28/25

If you shift through the baseless blame, watch Trump ask for resignations from as many civil servants as he can, “firing” which he legally can’t but does, leave cabinet-level posts empty… and instantly reap the rewards that go with failing to run a government. Soon after the air traffic controllers received their request to resign, as Co-President Musk and his DOGE henchmen ejected duly appointed and competent career operatives out of their offices and took over their functions without proper authorization, immediate budget cuts hit the FAA resulting in short-staffing of those air traffic controllers (a motley crew of DEI rejects – per Trump – that may include Black and disabled workers)… followed by two of the worst aircraft crashes in years within a day of each other… well you have to wonder if those DOGEs have saved enough money to pay for the promised tax cuts to billionaires… Although, virtually every one of those displaced civil servants (yes, Donald, including most of the FBI firings) will probably score big in their justifiable lawsuits against the federal government.

I think the acronym DOGE is most appropriate. A Doge (or “duke” as pictured above) is a member of a brutal body of rulers who ran Venice from the 7th to the 18th century. That “Bridge of Sighs,” which tourists slide under in a canal oriented tour, was the passageway for the rather numerous Venetians, who crossed a Doge, as they were about be executed. We have convicted felons who have seriously assaulted unformed police office get presidential pardons, lauded somehow as “patriots,” and career FBI agents who were assigned cases by their superiors and were “fired” for taking them, vilified, as corrupt agents of a deep state, by a felon-convicted President, surrounded by Republican sycophants who dropped to their knees to kiss the new Emperor’s ring.

Indeed, that was Emperor Trump. But was he really running anything? There seemed to be a higher-ranking emperor with enough money to buy his way into glory and power over the United States, apparently with more power than the Brit we shoved out the door, George III, in the Revolutionary War. Musk’s DOGE minions took over as many records and “powers of the purse” as they could digitally digest. Protests all across the United States against the brutal and seemingly random, but always with self-righteous anger, round up of those magnificent harvesters of our food, builders of our homes and infrastructure, caretakers of so many of our children… undocumented aliens, many of whom had been here for decades. Was this the beginning of that civil war pundits were predicting?

Bureaucratic and fiscal mismanagement, deserting our allies as we haughtily breach treaties… even treaties which Trump himself architected during his first term… were becoming Trump/Musk signature moves. Indeed, for Americans to tolerate such incompetence, the United States must be teetering on the brink of a national that would dwarf The Great Depression almost a century ago. Yet, looking at the hard numbers, as evidenced in the NY Times chart above, the US seems to be way overperforming on the economic front. But for reasons more reflective of a spooked herd than folks understanding that average Americans are doing better than virtually all of their counterparts overseas… with one glaring failure: health/life expectancy… Donald – don’t ask me about my grades at Wharton – Trump has convinced just barely above half all adult Americans that we are wallowing in an economic bog of no return.

So let me reach into of reddest states, Louisiana, to one of its few high-level universities (Tulane) determined to survey enough Americans about their reality and using objective measurements of economic success or failure – verifiable empirical research as, in early February, they released their State of the Nation report, pitting the United States against the rest of the world. When it comes to economic output, we are ahead of 98% of the rest of the world. In terms of raw productivity, we are 88% ahead. But where we fail, and where the numbers are getting worse, puts us in the lowest quartile when it comes to income inequality and increasing levels of poverty. As indicated, life expectancy is shrinking as infant mortality is rising.

But who benefits most from higher productivity and economic growth. Sure, workers get some of the pie, but ravenous billionaires and centi-millionaires get more than 90% of this new, bigger pie. And what does Donald Trump and his cherished (once denied) Project 2025 prioritize above all else – a massive tax cut for those who already eat most of our economic pie? And given the deficit that has been building because the rich do not pay remotely their fair share of loophole infested taxes. Nope, the government services and support systems for those at the bottom of our economic ladder (they have no power anyway… so take it from them). So for the billionaires who now seem to be running everything rather directly, Senior Emperor Elon Musk is rapidly realigning power in America to foster an oligarch-rich kleptocracy (Putin must be jealous) act the expense of freedom and democracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and these days all a MAGA alarmist has to do to secure compliance is point a finger at poor folks, scream “woke” a few times and end that Karenesque serenade with a “Let them eat tortilla!” finale!