The 2024 campaign season is in full swing. Missing in much of the rhetoric is the deteriorating fortunes of the nation. Despite massive increases in spending and a stratospheric increase in the national debt, key indicators show that the U.S. has gotten worse in key areas. The challenge affects both the nation as a whole, and the lives of individual citizens.
The dilemma has been noted by commentators on the right, left, and center.
Last June, the Atlantic noted that “In the past 50 years, despite overall economic growth, the quality of life for most Americans has declined.”
The American Enterprise Institute points out that “Economic freedom peaked by 2000 and stagnated and declined in the early 21st century.”
Nicholas Eberstadt, writing for Commentary in 2017 said that “…things have been going badly wrong in America since the beginning of the 21st century. It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then—and broke down very badly. The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits and prognosticators and professors and policymakers, ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were for the most part too distant from the distress of the general population to see or hear it.”
In 2008, when then-candidate Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” America, the national debt was $10 trillion. It is now over $34 trillion. Our infrastructure has not improved, our armed forces are smaller, social security’s funds continue to dwindle.
This has all occurred even though tax revenue has risen. In FY 2008, government revenue totaled $2.7 trillion. In 2023, the federal government collected $4.44 trillion. The Fed budget in 2008 was $2.983 trillion. In 2024 it was $6.5 trillion.
There has been little to show for all that extra spending.
In 2008, The United States was the world’s leading (some said only) superpower. Now, it is under siege by Russia, China, and Iran. Russia has a larger nuclear force, and China has a larger navy. There were 1,540,000 military servicemembers protecting the nation in 2008. In 2024, that figure has been reduced to 1,284,500. In 2008, Ukraine was whole. Now, Crimea has been taken over by Russia and the rest of the nation is under siege.
America’s manufacturing industry has been declining since before the year 2000. The Mckinsey Global Institute noted in 2021 that “…over the past two decades—[America’s] global share [of manufacturing] has fallen from 25 to 17 percent since 1997, with the net loss of 4.6 million jobs.”
The average price of a basic food basket in the United States amounted to just over 210 U.S. dollars as of January 2023, increasing by nearly 9 percent from the previous year. Back in 2019, the average value of a food basket was around 156.5 U.S. dollars.
Race relations have taken a turn for the worse. A Pew research poll in 2008 found that “found that whites, blacks and Hispanics all have generally favorable opinions of one another and all tend to see inter-group relations in a more positive than negative light.” Jared Gans, writing in The Hill, reported in 2023 that “A Washington Post-Ipsos poll … showed that 51 percent of Black respondents said they expect racism will get worse, while 37 percent said they expect it will stay about the same. Only 11 percent said it will get better.
The unauthorized illegal population in 2008 was about 11.6 million. In 2023, it was 49.5 million
So far, the precipitous decline in the nation’s condition has not been highlighted. The presidential candidates must do so.
Illustration: Pixabay