This Election Is Going to Reveal Who America Really Is

What this group doesn’t understand is the economics behind the American Idiot: most Americans are now too poor to invest in each other. Even if they wanted to, they can’t. So what this group sees as idiocy — the way Americans treat each other like disposable commodities, not investing in one another, not caring if they live or die — is, in fact, the fatal results of poverty. The average American dies in $62,000 of debt: he literally can’t fund a working social contract if he wants to. Those in middle incomes countries can’t often understand this: they can’t quite grasp that Americas has grown poor, that it has become an impoverished nation that can’t afford to be a modern society, while they have grown richer, reaching the point where a modern society of hospitals and high-speed trains is fast becoming a reality. (View Highlight)

They never did, and that is why today they don’t have any public goods. Almost uniquely in the world, apart from hardcore failed states, Americans have almost nothing. No public healthcare, retirement, higher education, income, and so forth. And then they die in $62,000 of debt. That’s not a coincidence, either: it’s a relationship. (View Highlight)