Why is it that the United States finds itself deficient in many of the qualities that powered its rise?

TL:DR: education

Longer answer: lack of education. A main reason for the US’ rise to prominence and power in the 20th century was that, in addition to an embarrassment of riches in natural resources, we had arguably the best-educated general populace in the world. As such, after WWII ended, the US had the enviable combination of a resources, the only first-world infrastructure that hadn’t been blown to smithereens- that had, actually, been helped by war production- and a workforce ready to exploit all of these.

Unfortunately, my lifetime (b. 1970) has seen a long-running, elite consensus to misfund public education. It works something like this: “you want lower taxes?” “Sure!” “Let me cut your property taxes, then!” “Sure!” Given that property taxes are the primary funding source for public education in the US, this results in many students receiving less education. Their kids, therefore fall for this con the same way, and are easier to trick into repeating it. Poorly-educated people are more easily manipulated by fear, which has been a primary go-to of both major political parties over the past 30 years or so.

The result of this is that rural kids and city kids get the short end of the stick, while suburban ones do comparatively well. You may object that urban kids get more money, but that needs to be balanced against the higher cost of living. and therefore educating, in an urban environment.

The irony of this misfunding is that it really accelerated as the Baby Boomers entered adulthood. It’s ironic, because the Boomers’ parents arguably benefitted the most from public education, especially via the GI Bill that provided the largest group of college-educated workers in US, and perhaps human, history.

My suggestion to begin reversing this is to keep the linkage of public school funding to property taxes, but to put all taxes into a statewide pool and redistribute them normalised for cost of living- for instance, it costs a lot more to educate a kid in Allegheny County (metro Pittsburgh) than rural Perry County. Note: this absolutely must be done on a state-by-state basis, as there is zero Constitutional basis to make such educational decisions nationally.

As a side note, I remember receiving fairly extensive civics education in school, but I’m not sure that kids still do. If not, that absolutely needs to be changed, as civics education could be seen as the owner’s manual for democracy.

But, first off, the above is a simple answer to a complicated problem. And it took 50 years to get us into the current mess, which suggests that it will take just as long to get us out of it. Only a well-educated population is capable of self-governance. Right now, we’re seeing what happens when a poorly-educated population takes a shot at it.

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