Over and over again, on this blog, I say that I am optimistic about the future of our country. There is a lot of pessimism out there, but I think it is misplaced. Consider:
- Democracy is thriving. Our two major political parties compete vigorously for votes. The decentralized nature of our republican form of government is our best guarantee of free and fair elections. There are 3143 counties in the U.S., and it is at the state and county levels where elections are regulated and conducted. This ensures that any election fraud, unlikely to begin with, will be isolated and widely dispersed. The claims of election fraud by President Trump, after the 2020 election, were totally rejected by other elected officials and the courts. In other words, democracy has just had a stress test and passed with flying colors.
- Our economy is strong. Our free enterprise economic system has made us the strongest country in the world. Real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers are on a long-term upward trajectory (see chart). Yes, they are down in the last two and a half years because of inflation, but the Federal Reserve will eventually bring inflation back to the desired 2% level, as painful and dragged out as this process may prove to be.
- Social progress. Our free and open society is leading to continued social progress by minorities. In particular, blacks are moving steadily into the middle class.
- Our main adversaries have bigger problems than we do. Our autocratic adversaries, especially China and Russia, want to bring us down. But they have much bigger problems than we do. Of course, we can never afford to become complacent about the superiority of our democratic and free-enterprise system. But, at the same time, we should be confident that we can continue to stay ahead of our adversaries by continuing to make our own society better and better.
- But the national debt is still a huge problem! With spending deficits growing fast and now approaching $2 trillion per year, our rapidly accumulating national debt is an ever more alarming problem. My overall optimism depends on our solving this problem before it leads to a new crisis!
- Conclusion. Americans are fortunate to live in one of (if not the) strongest and freest societies ever to have existed in human history. We are far from perfect but our dynamic political and economic system gives us a huge advantage in keeping ahead of our main rivals, China and Russia. We should be confident that, by solving our debt problem, we will continue to predominate, and provide critical world leadership, for many years to come.
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It Does Not Add Up 
Unfortunately, the depth and harmfulness experienced by those citizens who experience their life in poverty is worsening, as in suicide/homicide, maternal & infant mortality, homelessness, and mid-life deaths of despair. Our nation’s mean level of longevity stopped improving in 2010 and has slowly decreased since 2015. Hopefully, our nation’s electoral expression of “Social Choice” during next year’s election cycle will provide the basis for improving the future level of our nation’s human survival. pjn
Inflation is especially harmful for the poor and others on fixed incomes. The best thing to be done for them is to push inflation back down to the 2% level as quickly as possible. In general, a growing economy provides the most opportunity for self- betterment.
Inflation should be pushed down to zero. Anything over 0% inflation will harm the poor and help the corrupt. The 2% that people talk about is not science. It was a number some foreign dignitary thew out during an interview that he pulled out of his hat.
Inflation robs us all and especially the middle and lower-income folks.
It is not a good idea to try to push inflation down to zero, because it might then fall below zero. This would then be deflation, which would cause more harm than inflation. Of course, 2% is an arbitrary target but it is about the right figure in a practical sense.