What went wrong?
 

We went to the moon, built the fastest plane to fly, had affordable higher education and healthcare, and free love.

What went wrong? :confused:

In before this goes to PARF....

Divisive politics. Your country appears to be stalled by infighting.

And debt...

What went wrong?
 

Chronic government overspending, a systematic dismantling of traditional values (family, community, civic responsibility, etc.). The rise of a generation of spoiled children with entitlement complexes (culture of no accountability), too many laws and lawyers (too litigious of a society), a lack of respect for other human beings (including the popularization of "thug culture" that glorifies this), far too much government meddling everywhere other than in the places it ought to be, a blurring of the line between politician and celebrity, the destruction of our educational system by so-called "progressive" union schlockers more interested in cultivating a political mindset than imparting knowledge and critical thinking skills to our children, it goes on and on and on... There's no one thing - it's a lot of things which are all related if you stop and ponder it for a moment.

It mostly comes down to a change in mindset, attitude and expectations en masse which results in people never admitting they're wrong and ought to reconsider their thoughts, values, WTC. If they want different results.

Please keep all politics in PARF.

Thank you! ;)

Ho hum. Just another empire crumbling . . .

Ian

Excellent post!

The disintegration of the "Family Unit" and regard for others may have something to do with it.

Have we become a more self-centered culture?

In our Pelican community...our forum.....how does that manifest itself as it relates to society?

Members who post without consideration of others? So called keyboard commandos?

Yup

What happened to architecture?

When is the last time you saw architecture like this?

http://www.ralphcarlsonblog.com/wp-c...midcentury.jpg

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/i...ler-walker.jpg

http://daddytypes.com/archive/tarantino_usonian_nj.jpg

Look at this pad......wow!!!

http://www.modernaustin.com/wp-conte..._d-590x451.jpg

LOL, +1

We had a head start on industrialization post war but the rest of the world caught up or passed us. Some of the early advantage was unsustainable environmental degradation and unfair/unsafe labor practices that other nations are currently ignoring to their short term advantage. LBJ's "Great Society" has saddled us with progressively massive debt and government dependent, entitled, and essentially unemployable lower class that has forced reliance on illegal labor while third world birth rates and container shipping have eroded first world wages. On top of that, we have felt compelled to play world policeman at the expense of the American tax payer and their children and children's children.

That is a thread all to itself, that will more then likely end up in parf. I detest the mindset of our "superiority"

Look at your original question: "We went to the moon, built the fastest plane to fly, had affordable higher education and healthcare, and free love.

What went wrong?"

The moon/space successes--government programs.

Fastest plane--government/military program.

Affordable higher education--government (state and federal) programs.

Affordable health care--lost through uncontrolled rises in costs generated by for profit health insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical suppliers. Exacerbated by government mandates to provide service when patients cannot afford rising costs.

My only point is to show, given the original question, that government has played the leading role in those things you deem honorable and worthy. I agree with much of what Porsche-O-phile posted but would only add that everything in his post could be traced back to the decline of his parenthetical definition of "traditional values." If government's role has changed (and it has) it's because too many people abrogated their responsibilities to themselves, their families, their communities, and to their country. "Let the government handle it" became the easy way out. As trite as it sounds, we get the government we deserve. It can be changed.

We basically had all of those before LBJ.

I would argue, somewhat tongue in cheek, that all of the blame rests on Lee Harvey Oswald. Without him, we would never have had LBJ.

This went wrong, neither of these are "affordable" or even reasonable anymore.

At a certain point even a great work ethic is not enough to rule the world.

Look at Apple; an American invention, wildly successful, but who benefits the most? I would say probably China.

The industrial manufacturing powerhouse of America is disappearing and becoming increasingly irrelevant. If that was your 'core strength, then what follows on is inevitable.

Short answer.. No more competition from the USSR.

I'd say this biggest factor is when corporations focused on share value above all; it transitioned a change in the business relationships with the country from symbiotic to parasitic. They pay China to build the products, pay India to provide tech support, and that leads to few here being able to buy them - which is somehow the government's fault. ;)

One thing capitalists hate to admit is the fact that the government plays a HUGE role in the economy. Look at 2008. Massive federal intervention to prop-up the monetary system. (No help for the little guy. "Socialism for the rich, capitalism for everybody else.") The Cold War was fueled by massive government spending paid for by higher tax rates. We have disassembled that since 1980. Taxes were slashed, deficits took off (politicians addicted to spending on their pet programs), Cold War ends, more tax cuts, more deficits, wars of choice (not paid for), more tax cuts not paid for by spending cuts, politicians gutting social programs such as college tuition grants and other support money. (College goes from a few hundred bucks a year in the '80s to tens to hundreds of thousands a year now.)

Banks can fail with no repercussions while graduates dare not miss a payment on their massive college loans--and are not allowed to legally declare bankruptcy.

We are going back to the world before 1914 where the few wealthy elites control the world's governments while the rest of us fight over the scraps. 1914-1980, and especially 1945-1980, was an anomaly. Wealth was destroyed globally by two world wars and a long economic depression and then the post-WWII rebuilding (massive government spending) allowed for massive manufacturing growth and that spread wealth among the populations of the west, especially in the U.S. The west came out on top, after destroying the manufacturing competition of its enemies, and thus enjoyed an unusual 30-year prosperity for a majority of the U.S. population. It's over. Politicians are--have been for three decades--dismantling the government's propping-up of the population and giving the windfall to the wealthy elite.

I would like to add two things to those already mentioned: egos and empire building. Big egos and the game of one-upsmanship with the efforts to impose wills and philosophies have contributed mightily to the partisan atmosphere, waste, inefficiency, and gridlock in government. By empire building I'm referring to all the programs started that the bureaucratic infrastructures strived to increase in size, longevity, power, and funding. The welfare system and the VA are two examples of the many.

Marv, by "welfare system" do you mean Medicare and Social Security for old white folks or poor-people Welfare? I assume poor-people Welfare because most other people would kill anyone who dared mess with their Medicare and Social Security.

If the poor (and wounded/maimed/PTSD vets) have it so good with their "empires" and "egos" then feel free to trade places with them.