Can We Decline If We Aren't "Up"?

"(P)ublic and commercial services work badly, the average person is becoming poorer rather than richer, the economy has been pulled horribly out of shape and government in the widest sense is hopelessly dysfunctional, with different branches of the state frequently at loggerheads with one another.”

Yeah, welcome to My Island...England? Okay, the quote above is from this book review in The Economist, the magazine Our """leaders""" should read if they knew how to read. Fact is, they can't, so they don't.

The book's premise is that England could have a Third World economy by 2014(!) based on the quoted description above. Now I've argued (way back in 2005) that We were not a Third World country, but could become one...and so We have. Don't agree? Then answer this:

Question the First: Are Our public services better now than in 2005? Or 1995? Or 1975?

Question the Second: Are We getting richer, as in increased income per capita in real dollars, not inflation-adjusted accounting smoke?

Question the Third--World (sorry, had to do it): Is Our economy in better shape than in 2005? Or 1995? Or even 1975?

Question the Fourth: Is Our government less bureaucratic and less contentious, thus more effective than it was before?

The answer to all four questions is a resounding "No." You can argue the points if you're a pluperfect moron or worse, a member of the misnamed LIBREInitiative, a group with an extra B and R in their names for reasons that have to do with abject idiocy.

Now in the case of England, they were once an empire, so it is appropriate to say they are and have been in frank decline for decades. But can We say We are in decline? For doesn't "decline" imply that there was an "up" and thus one is headed "down"?

The way I see it, We are in a black hole, where up/down mean nothing because We've long been sucked into a hellacious sucking nadir. We can't be in decline because We flatlined into sheer suckitude (yes, that's a word; I used it, it's a word) about 20 years ago and all We've done since is corkscrew around in swampy suckiness.

So yes, We are a Third World economy because We have allowed Our """leaders""" to shred what solid economic foundations We had through serial incompetence and prolonged graft, power-up the "government as nepotism central" surge to mollycoddle almost 30% of Our "workforce," allow national debt to pile up to the tune of over $60 billion in a country that produces about $57 billion...and where 64% of the profits We produce--at least--are sent out to the U.S. of part of A.

When you have a weak economy propped up and abused by an outside nation, governed through patronage, nepotism and graft, with the "haves" becoming a smaller, more powerful group and the "have nots" becoming the vast majority and where a clear majority of business profits leave the nation to line the pockets of the dominant country, you have a colony. Pure and simple.

And when the colony is stuck in a black hole of suckitude, it is nothing more than a Third World country.

We aren't going "down": We are are already there. Which means We have a huge potential to go "up." If We choose.

And as I said in 2005: We must choose.


The Jenius Has Spoken.