These rankings are especially revealing in pointing out trend, rather than absolute ranking. And the trend for the US is clear: Decline.

 In a nutshell, there is just no way on earth for American mentality to become more like the rest of the world without American prosperity also converging to the world average. That is the central theme of the HopNChange journey —  and Americans would recognize it as such, we’re it not perhaps for their renowned international naïveté.

So, unfortunately, these evil capitalist rankings relate to another ranking which is the A-Z of mid and long term prosperity: GROWTH RATE.

And that directly relates to another more ominous predictor of what’s to come: People’s attitudes. For example, I deal a lot with the Swiss and I have noticed that they are both cognizant of their politico-economic and institutional differences to the rest of the world AND actively and proudly continue to revere and uphold such differences.  They are thus on a good track, for the time being. Proud of Swiss decentralization (the major portion of public spending determined by cantons) and especially proud of being different than the rest of Europe where the dream of more centralization is the norm, i.e. more bureaucratization, redistribution and cronyism. 

But in contrast to, say, Switzerland, the leading trend in America is towards ideological convergence to the rest of the world, and particularly Europe. In America, and especially amongst the left, the chief complaint is that we are losing our standing on the world because …ahemm  “We are not like Europe”. It’s pathetic to see the excuses and logical contortions the human mind goes through to justify and enable redistribution. Redistribution from the top 1% in global wealth standing to the top 20% in global wealth standing that is (i.e. what redistribution in America essentially amounts to, by default). It definitely seems like Americans are finally ripe to listen to the standard sirens of prosperity shortcuts. Sirens that have brought down, many one civilizations: Reject American differences from the rest of the world and join the world average, culturally — and thus inevitably, economically too. 

So in contrast to the, say, Swiss, the prevailing American attitude and aspiration is “We want to become like Europe”. Of course not like southern Europe (even liberals have mostly given up on that) where growth trendlines are stagnant (and lately even negative, but that is a temporary correction, the slow growth decline trendlines will be restored sooner or later). But American liberals want to become like Northern Europe, you know, Scandinavia, France, Germany, i.e. places that are riding an ahem .. astounding! growth trendline of 1-2% — in a world that is growing by 5% on average — and are thus on a permanent trendline of losing 3-4% of their relative world prosperity standing per year. 

In other words, the prevailing mid-long term aspirations of Americans can be summarized as: “Our best scenario, the completion of the HopNChange journey, is to copy Europe which is merging into average worldwide prosperity levels — at an average rate of 3-4% per year!”. So when the Transformation of HopNChange is complete we will be lucky dogs, just like France and Germany who, every year on average, are losing 3-4% of their relative world prosperity standing. And I’m not even comparing to Eurozone averages, just the better performers amongst the Europeans. As they say in Europe: “In the world of the blind, the one eyed is king”. Thus in Europe, a 2% growth trendline – in a world that grows at 5% average — makes you a tiger economy! an economy to be emulated!

But I could be wrong. Don’t take my word for it. Just be foolish enough to wait twenty years before recognizing it. As I have repeatedly said, decline can be almost fun… in the beginning! For 4,5,6 years, sub-par growth rates will only amount to a 15% or so convergence towards the world average. Unfortunately, the negative effects of slow growth tend to compound. But we’ll deal with that when we get there. Once we have more than 50% of the population deadlocked into government dependency then we’ll realize we made a mistake and reverse course. People will support it, people will vote for it. Ok, austerity, you go first…[ha ha]. The movie of decline is playing according to script…

You realize this was exactly what candidate Obama was promising in 2008?

Get Money out of politics

SWINNEY BIG THREE

A—Fed fund election—6 months-= 3 primary 3 general—No personal money—

Outside very very limited—VERY

B. since no need for campaign funds BAN all government employees accepting anything with a financial value. Present or future promises. This closes K Street Bribery

100.. Progressive Flat Tax by group—14,00 income and we should be

paying our way and paying down the debt. We can do it with higher tax rate for top.

We did it 1945-1980 by Taxing wealth.

Sad but true today top 50% get 87% + of

individual income and pay 13.5% tax Rate.

It took a Tax Rate of 32% on Top 50% to balance our budget. It would require a change from (Top 1% paying 23%); (Top 10% paying 19%); and (top 25% paying 15%). The top 2% own 50% of wealth and took 30% of income.

Redistribute Wealth and fast.

HOW— by Flat Tax by group—tax income to pay our way—we have done it before.