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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So many things have gotten so much worse.  Shrinkflation and skimpflation.  Customer service being replaced by AI that sends you in endless loops and never solves the problem.  Endless subscriptions and paywalls.  Climate change, global instability, and constant supply chain disruptions causing shortages. Younger people increasingly accept that it’s normal to pay the same price and receive less and less, because they don’t remember what things were like before.

Regardless of the fact that our living standards are still better than a 14th century peasant (for now, until the billionaires have their way), we’ve lost something very vital: optimism. People used to look forward to the future. [b]For a moment after WWII, it seemed like things were possible.[/b]  Rights were expanding, schools were desegregating, opportunities were opening up for more and more people, and the moral arc of the universe was bending (slowly) in the right direction.  The middle class was expanding.  Flying cars were just around the corner.  Families could get by comfortably on one income.  A college education unlocked doors.  Kids could just be kids without having to grind year round at sports just to make the high school team.  Minority groups started to see themselves represented on TV and in the movies.  Workers could get together and demand better conditions.  Journalists did their job and reported instead of fawning.  We weren’t being constantly surveilled by smart technology.

Greedy rich people, religious leaders, and racists all concluded that this was a bad thing, joined forces, and now here we are, being driven off the cliff by people who very much do not have your best interests at heart.[/quote]

This is an important misunderstanding of history. America’s post WWII economic dominance which afforded us so much was always going to be temporary. America raced out ahead of the world after the war because much of the industrial base of the world was destroyed.  We won because nobody else could compete, not because rod the superiority of our model.

As countries rebuilt their economic bases, they slowly eroded our economic dominance. Slowly at first but then all at once. We helped squander that lead, but it was always going to come to an end. A simple and understandable example is the Japanese automakers eventually outcompeting and destroying the model that made labor unions so powerful and important in the USA after WWII.

A lot of tiger things contributed to the decline, from both the Democrats and Republicans,[b] but the post WII American economy was always going to be a temporary thing.[/b] [/quote]

You’re talking about economic superiority which is just one aspect of what PP was talking about. We didn’t need to cut education and infrastructure spending and export jobs like we did. We didn’t need to allow corporate interests to take over our government.[/quote]

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