When the world's only supposed superpower starts coughing up blood and seems to not even have the political will to contribute 1/6th of its citizens with healthcare, it's hard to not correlate it to other federal union whose multitudes of small problems led to a spectacular demise. It may seem counter-intuitive to say that Usa has Soviet Union's ailments (due to supposed broad differences in the degree of state capitalism) but comparisons come to be eerie once they start being made.
1) Structurally and logistically carefully inability to satisfy consumer demand for best and more accessible healthcare, education, and salutary food. Economic priority is on building, maintaining, and addition vast approved and thermonuclear weaponry rather than on enhancing ability of life for all Americans. Political leadership tolerates addition suffering of the citizenry and deterioration of infrastructure to assert military power angle capabilities abroad.
Trickle Up Poverty
2) Rigid ideological indoctrination of most of the habitancy and social officials that prevents pragmatic seminar on the highest levels with regard to modernization efforts. All serious talk of modernization is instinctively seen as treasonous by military and major party leadership who have vested personal interests in perpetuating the status quo. Not only is state orthodoxy not questioned by major media but there is full hold of efforts to violently spread American style socioeconomic club abroad.
3) Deteriorating food ability due to the architecture of means of food production and distribution. Inability of subsidized state capitalist enterprises to contribute fresh non-adulterated produce. Rise in popularity of decentralized small farms to fill holes in contribute by large, inefficient, and increasingly risky state supported large farms. Situation is still not bad sufficient for homeowners to grow food on small plots of land yet.
4) Severe military overexpansion overseas. The state is going broke supporting numerous satellite regimes in South America, Asia, Central Europe, and Middle East through maintenance of hundreds of bases and approved deployments.
5) Lack of frank seminar on national problems since they are not allowed by a handful of state subsidized media conglomerates that contribute most of the information to the citizenry (they have vested interests in the status quo just like political and military leadership does). Severe self censorship by news outlets that do not deviate from the party line in any meaningful way.
6) Inability to task soft power due to serious erosion of economic strength. Utilization of the only tools left that elites can use to task global power, namely military force and threats of force.
7) Ideological stagnation, exhaustion, and moral bankruptcy. The average educated habitancy does not believe in the party line about the American dream anymore or that United States is the wealthiest and freest community and a force for good in the world. The ideological exhaustion and disbelief is increasingly present among social officials who just mouth the party lines. Spread of fatalism and apathy among the general population. Some of the educated now come to be rabid reactionaries and try to go back to the days when the ideological fervor was more present (libertarians, imperial reformers who want to go back to the days of state capitalism in the 1950s, elderly who remember when economic base was addition rather than shrinking, etc). Efforts to "improve" or "fine tune" American state capitalism addition as well as efforts to scrap it altogether.
8)The biggest and most developed gulag prison principles that is still addition and increasingly relying on prison labor for artificial goods. Mass arrests are made for non-violent consensual acts even in the face of broad economic costs and violation of human rights. Disregard for human possession as a blind eye is turned towards the prison principles (now the biggest in the world) that is dangerously overcrowded and where torture (inmate rape and other abuse) is allowed to continue. Human possession violations as some ethnic groups are arbitrarily and disproportionately targeted for imprisonment (higher arrests for drug possession among blacks/Hispanics than whites disproportionate to the reported use).
9) The politically active young habitancy do not believe what they see in mainstream media anymore. They increasingly turn to alternative or foreign sources for information about their own country rather than continue to listen to the blatant lies and propaganda on major news networks. Major news increasingly focusing on problems of other countries, trivial entertainment, and hold of military making ready than introspection on declining national compel and health.
10) Increased belief on middlemen (Wall Mart) that join together the American consumer with goods made in other countries (Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc) since ability of domestic manufactures and workforce is declining. Domestic manufactures can't satisfy the consumer demands of community even if the state officials found political will.
11) Deterioration in the ability of the American worker that cannot be reversed due to state's inability to contribute contemporary schooling for most citizens. schooling principles itself is tainted by propaganda.
12) Most of the habitancy is isolated from the covering world and has no idea what it's like to live in an developed society. The elderly are particularly affected. Only 1/3 of habitancy have passports and have been abroad (mostly state officials/businessmen/educated/urban/suburban upper classes and their families). addition psychological restlessness among the young and leave from cities in the rotting industrial heartland. Growth in mindless hedonism and drinking as a form of escape.
13) Western Europe is now seen as a model civilization to emulate and aspire to rather than just a different principles of development. Psychological and moral surrender in trying to conceptualize and evolve American state capitalism towards greater heights. Western Europeans increasingly looked at as more fun and developed in terms of knowing how to live and what values to have.
14) Both wings of the pro-oligarchic political making ready (The more nationalistic and introspective Democratic wing that wants to fine tune American style state capitalism and the more internationalist Republican wing that wants to spread it abroad) suffering from gerontocracy rule. Elderly now predominate in the legislative like they did in the 80s in China and Soviet Union. They are unable to effectively conceptualize modernization efforts and thus defer to reactionary defensive mindset while suppressing more youthful reformers. The two political wings were all the time nearly same at the center but are now almost merging as a result. Younger knee jerk reactionary militarists, regional politicians, and Eu leaning reformers increasingly find themselves wholly without an outlet for expression.
15) addition physiological and psychological suffering in the land of plentiful natural resources. Insufficient provision of livable shelter due to structural inefficiencies of the economic and political system. Collapsing infrastructure that is decades behind the most developed countries on the planet (and often even behind developing nations) and that is not designed to meet the demand placed on it.
16) Serious and irreversible budgetary gaps between collected money to fund the functioning of the country and the money needed. Irreversibly large debt from military commitments and ideologically based supervision of society.
17) Restlessness in the satellite countries, desire of military allies to select their own developmental path, and Washington Dc's decreasing international credibility.
18) Inability of the top leadership to merge the diverse ethnic groups of the Federal Union. As Emmanuel Todd (who staggering collapse of the Soviet union accurately) has pointed out, the child mortality of blacks has positively risen while the white child mortality declined. Demonstrative lack of national ethnic consolidation and thus lack of emergence of a unitary American nationality. Ethnic and regional groups still looking out for themselves rather than the whole of society.
19) Slow trickle of educated elites out of United States to countries where they can get best opportunities to materially expand.
20) Militarization of police to keep social order. Blatant suppression of genuine reformist political candidates from having any airtime. Growth in power of the brain organs.
21) History of violent belligerence abroad as well as continuing abuses and occupations (Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia). Militarized, warlike, and often xenophobic mindset of the habitancy that is more involved about imperial glory than peace, development, and human rights. After Ww2, United States positively killed a lot more foreign peoples directly and indirectly than Soviet Union (which was under siege for decades by Nato armor).
The list can seriously be extensive to have 40 items. The reader is free to think of other key things that caused the slow rot and inefficiencies in Soviet Union and find an American equivalent. In the end, the overview of the cause of decline can be that the contradictions in the social fabric of United States (ideological emphasis on equality even though there is horrid ever addition inequality) combined with the decades of state propaganda to generate a serious inability to adapt and cope with national problems.
All the problems that Obama is now facing Gorbachev has also faced. He is seen as not bright fast sufficient when it comes to reform or is seen as bright too fast. In the meantime, he is constrained by status quo entrenched political interests and elites in almost every major organizational hierarchy. Historically, this is a very risky political situation since major social discontent begins when things start to improve but aren't seen as enhancing fast sufficient (or there is a bit of a reversal). We've seen this in late 19th century China, in late 18th century France, and of course Soviet Union itself. It seems United States has only postponed serious economic mystery due to the collapse of its rival and by flooding Eurasia with dollars in the 1990s.
All Major Problems That Affected Soviet Union Also sway United States Today