The United States maintains a leading political position on the world stage and is the second largest economy after China. The average income of Americans is the highest in the world, but the life of the common population is associated with a lot of difficulties. The country's economy is balancing on the verge of a total crisis, and the domestic political sphere is constantly shaken by serious scandals. A closer look at US policy issues turns out to be completely insignificant compared to the difficulties that ordinary American citizens face.
Social inequality
The United States is completing a list of developed nations by the economic inequality index. In 2015, for the first time in the history of the United States, the middle class was a minority, and the proportion of those who decided to start their own business was minimal. The twenty richest people in America own more than the 152 million poor Americans. The average family has about $ 16, 000 in debt, and 41% of the population cannot pay medical bills.
Since the middle of the last century, the income of wealthy families in America has grown by 90%, while the income of the poorest segments of the population has grown by only 10%. Only 25% of billionaires own assets for $ 1 trillion, which exceeds the total savings of more than half of Americans (56%). The share of citizens receiving food stamps has increased. For 15% of Americans in 2014, coupons became the main factor in survival amid total unemployment. In 2015, not a single person worked in 19% of families, although official data indicate 5% of unemployment.
State bureaucracy
The US social problem is bureaucracy. To get into some structures, people have to queue for several months. You can set up a business in 30 minutes, but then you will have to receive “certificates for references” for a very long time and collect papers. The same situation with other documents - you can get paper without bribes, but you have to wait a very long time. A more or less tolerant situation has developed only with the issuance of a driver’s license. If you are preparing for the exam, you can get rights in 1-2 days.
Lack of social guarantees
A serious social problem in the USA is the lack of guarantees for citizens at the federal level. There are no single programs, but there are many large and small forms of targeted support across states and communities. These programs make it possible to partially compensate for the lack of material resources to meet the minimum needs of the family. The conditions for receiving social assistance are confirmed low income, absence of one of the parents or unemployment.
Education problems
The current education system in the United States is aimed at serving the consumer community. For many Americans, the only way to graduate is to participate in a loan program. Even universities that are not among the top 100 educational institutions in the country are very expensive, and education is becoming an overwhelming financial burden for young people.
Almost a third of students are ready to give some kind of internal organ in order to be able to pay debts for studies. At the same time, the general level of education remains very low. A survey conducted in 2015, for example, showed that most had not heard anything about the tragedy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Deterioration of health of citizens
Medical insurance is very expensive, and without a card it is extremely difficult to get dental and general medical care. Filling one tooth, for example, costs from up to two hundred dollars, and a more complex treatment can cost several thousand. This is a serious US problem amid a general deterioration in the health of the nation. Obesity and mental disorders are common.
Migration problem
The US development problem is migration. The government, amid protests from ordinary citizens, is increasingly thinking about the need to introduce restrictions on entry. This is especially true for refugees from the Middle East and Muslim countries. In contrast, there is an opinion that this is unacceptable for a free country, but throughout almost the entire history of the United States, migrants have repeatedly been harassed.
Human rights abuses
US economic problems are insignificant compared to large-scale oppression of the population. The country is constantly accused of totalitarianism in relation to geopolitical competitors, but also in the States themselves, human rights violations are not less, or even more. After the events of September 11, 2001, ordinary Americans lost their fundamental freedoms, and authorities began to intervene in the lives of citizens.
The country's problems (the US hides this information, therefore the data of the 2014 Chinese report are presented below) are striking: in 2013, 137 people were victims of mass executions, the United States has a secret surveillance system, which is a violation of international law, 80 thousand people are held in solitary confinement cells in long-term detention, the number of homeless people in 2012-2014 increased by 16%, the exploitation of labor by minors is widespread in agriculture.
Judicial outrage
The United States is the country with the largest number of prisoners. This US problem is associated with serious business. It is beneficial for the authorities to put people in jail for the slightest offense, and if there is no good lawyer, then any American is actually at risk. It often turns out that people who have served twenty-thirty years in prison are innocent. In addition, torture and forbidden interrogation methods are used in American prisons, and basic medical care is not provided. Compared with these facts, the US environmental problems are completely insignificant.
Police brutality
What problems in the US are constantly covered in the media? This is the behavior of American police officers who, in order to ensure their own security, are forced to not stand on ceremony with people who have committed minor crimes. Minimal disobedience can lead to an aggressive reaction, and a hint of possession of a weapon is fire to defeat. To suppress mass protests, tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, pads with shots are used. The United States leads in the number of cases of violence by law enforcement officials. In 2017, U.S. police shot and killed nearly a thousand people.
Racial conflicts
Racial conflicts have always existed in the United States - this problem is still common today. Absolute equality is declared in words, but in practice this is not observed, so the authorities are trying if not to eliminate, then at least mask the inequality. Human rights activists, for example, are demanding that the indication of race be removed from the bulletins, because mainly blacks and Hispanics appear in criminal news.
Sometimes the desire for equality is expressed in the oppression of the white-skinned population. For example, in New York in 2014, the educational program for gifted children was closed, because the officials did not seem politically correct enough that mainly white children participated in it.
Crime and Suicide
The problems of the US economy are suicides and crime against the background of respectively economic and social ill-being. Crime is mainly concentrated in the ghetto. In the southern states, the problem is the concentration of a large number of Hispanics, who are often in the country on illegal grounds. Many of them do not speak English. The country has 33 thousand gangs, in which almost 1.5 million people are members. It turns out that one gangster accounts for about 230 people. This is the case, according to the official data of the FBI.
Suicides are common in the army, and sodomy, sexual licentiousness, and drunkenness flourish in the army. 349 soldiers committed suicide in 2012. People are pushed to this step by stress and depressive moods, financial and legal problems. Almost every day, an American soldier takes his own life. At the same time, fewer soldiers died in punitive operations in Afghanistan in 2012 (about 300). For the sake of justice, it should be noted that there are suicides in the armies of other countries of the world, including the Russian one. But in the Russian Federation there are much fewer than in the States, and most suicides are committed by conscripts in disadvantaged units.
The general anxiety of the nation
The US problem is the significant general anxiety of the population. Americans are actively buying up places in various bomb shelters and bunkers that are designed to protect against economic, nuclear, and biological weapons. Demand increased after the devastating tsunami in Japan and the Libyan war. It should be noted that most bunkers will not protect Americans from the conditions of modern warfare.
Many citizens own small arms, so people fear social collapse, terrorist attacks and riots. Once again, the population began to actively buy weapons after a series of terrorist acts in Paris in 2015.
US budget deficit
The problem of the economy is the budget deficit. By 2015, the country's national debt exceeded $ 18 trillion, and the total exceeded $ 62 trillion, that is, 350% of total GDP. At the moment, there are no means for payments, so the threat of fiscal cliffs and technical default constantly hangs over the States. The issue regarding the timing of the collapse of the entire US economy is very complex.
Much depends on the subjective decisions of politicians. That is why many analysts quite often gave erroneous forecasts in the past. The only thing that is clear is that it is necessary to radically change the policy in order to avoid collapse. A simplified presentation of the situation can be found in the documentary "I owe the United States."
Bankruptcy of territories
Detroit is a problem throughout America, but this is not the only case. The list of bankrupt cities is constantly growing. In California, for example, Mammoth Lakes, Stockton, and San Bernadino have already declared themselves insolvent. On the verge of balancing San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach. In Rhode Island, Harrisburg is practically insolvent. Namely, around Detroit, the noise rose for the reason that the situation there is impossible to hide. The economy of the city was killed by racial conflicts, corruption and economic depression.
