When the world's only supposed superpower starts coughing up blood and seems to not even have the political will to provide 1/6th of its citizens with healthcare, it's hard to not assess it to an additional one 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 big differences in the degree of state capitalism) but comparisons become eerie once they start being made.
1) Structurally and logistically carefully inability to satisfy consumer interrogate for great and more accessible healthcare, education, and healthy food. Economic priority is on building, maintaining, and increasing vast approved and thermonuclear weaponry rather than on improving ability of life for all Americans. Political leadership tolerates increasing suffering of the citizenry and deterioration of infrastructure to articulate troops power angle capabilities abroad.
Trickle Up Poverty
2) Rigid ideological indoctrination of most of the habitancy and communal officials that prevents pragmatic discussion on the top levels regarding modernization efforts. All serious talk of modernization is instinctively seen as treasonous by troops 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 sustain of efforts to violently spread American style socioeconomic assosication abroad.
3) Deteriorating food ability due to the architecture of means of food output and distribution. Inability of subsidized state capitalist enterprises to provide fresh non-adulterated produce. Rise in popularity of decentralized small farms to fill holes in provide by large, inefficient, and increasingly dangerous state supported large farms. Situation is still not bad sufficient for homeowners to grow food on small plots of land yet.
4) Severe troops overexpansion overseas. The state is going broke supporting numerous satellite regimes in South America, Asia, Central Europe, and Middle East straight through maintenance of hundreds of bases and approved deployments.
5) Lack of frank discussion on national problems since they are not allowed by a handful of state subsidized media conglomerates that provide most of the facts to the citizenry (they have vested interests in the status quo just like political and troops leadership does). Severe self censorship by news outlets that do not deviate from the party line in any meaningful way.
6) Inability to project soft power due to serious erosion of economic strength. Utilization of the only tools left that elites can use to project global power, namely troops 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 gift among communal officials who just mouth the party lines. Spread of fatalism and apathy among the general population. Some of the educated now become rabid reactionaries and try to go back to the days when the ideological fervor was more gift (libertarians, imperial reformers who want to go back to the days of state capitalism in the 1950s, elderly who remember when economic base was increasing rather than shrinking, etc). Efforts to "improve" or "fine tune" American state capitalism increasing as well as efforts to scrap it altogether.
8)The biggest and most industrialized gulag prison principles that is still increasing and increasingly relying on prison labor for artificial goods. Mass arrests are made for non-violent consensual acts even in the face of big economic costs and violation of human rights. Disregard for human rights 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 rights violations as some ethnic groups are arbitrarily and disproportionately targeted for imprisonment (higher arrests for drug rights 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 facts 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 sustain of troops establishment than introspection on declining national drive and health.
10) Increased reliance on middlemen (Wall Mart) that connect the American consumer with goods made in other countries (Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc) since ability of domestic industry and workforce is declining. Domestic industry can't satisfy the consumer demands of community even if the state officials found political will.
11) Deterioration in the ability of the American employee that cannot be reversed due to state's inability to provide contemporary instruction for most citizens. instruction principles itself is tainted by propaganda.
12) Most of the habitancy is isolated from the outside world and has no idea what it's like to live in an industrialized 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). increasing psychological restlessness among the young and flee from cities in the rotting industrial heartland. Increase 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 separate 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 industrialized in terms of knowing how to live and what values to have.
14) Both wings of the pro-oligarchic political establishment (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 always nearly same at the center but are now roughly merging as a result. Younger knee jerk reactionary militarists, regional politicians, and Eu leaning reformers increasingly find themselves completely without an outlet for expression.
15) increasing physiological and psychological suffering in the land of plentiful natural resources. Insufficient provision of livable security due to structural inefficiencies of the economic and political system. Collapsing infrastructure that is decades behind the most industrialized countries on the planet (and often even behind developing nations) and that is not designed to meet the interrogate located on it.
16) Serious and irreversible budgetary gaps in the middle of collected money to fund the functioning of the country and the money needed. Irreversibly large debt from troops commitments and ideologically based administration of society.
17) Restlessness in the satellite countries, desire of troops allies to pick 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 incredible collapse of the Soviet union accurately) has pointed out, the child mortality of blacks has literally 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 great opportunities to materially expand.
20) Militarization of police to keep communal order. Blatant suppression of genuine reformist political candidates from having any airtime. Increase in power of the intelligence 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 concerned about imperial glory than peace, development, and human rights. After Ww2, United States literally 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 wide 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 summary of the cause of decline can be that the contradictions in the communal fabric of United States (ideological emphasis on equality even though there is horrid ever increasing inequality) combined with the decades of state propaganda to create 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 provocative fast sufficient when it comes to reform or is seen as provocative too fast. In the meantime, he is constrained by status quo entrenched political interests and elites in roughly every major organizational hierarchy. Historically, this is a very dangerous political situation since major communal discontent begins when things start to enhance but aren't seen as improving 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 procedure Soviet Union itself. It seems United States has only postponed serious economic difficulty due to the collapse of its rival and by flooding Eurasia with dollars in the 1990s.
All Major Problems That Affected Soviet Union Also work on United States Today
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