Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Ordinary Citizen

THIRD WORLD

AMERICA

HOW OUR POLITICIANS ARE ABANDONING THE ORDINARY CITIZEN

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

For the millions of middle-class Americans fighting to keep the American Dream alive

Contents

Cover

Title Page

NOTE: A WARNING FOR BRITAIN

Preface

Chapter 1 - THIRD WORLD AMERICA

Chapter 2 - NIGHTMARE ON MAIN STREET

Chapter 3 - AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL DILAPIDATED

Chapter 4 - CSI USA: WHO KILLED THE AMERICAN DREAM?

Chapter 5 - SAVING OURSELVES FROM A THIRD WORLD FUTURE

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

NOTE: A WARNING FOR BRITAIN

When I sat down to write Third World America, my goal was to sound the alarm about what was happening in the United States, and to do so while there was still time to course-correct.

And though the book focuses primarily on the U.S., the conditions it depicts are by no means an example of “American Exceptionalism.” In fact, the breakdown I describe—the increasing tilt of the economy toward those in finance and away from working families, the costly short-sightedness about a decaying infrastructure, the lack of upward mobility, the shredding of the social safety net, the rising income inequality, the lack of shared sacrifice—is, unfortunately, also happening in the U.K.

The U.S. and the U.K. may be, as Shaw once said, two nations “separated by a common language,” but they’re definitely joined by a common problem. There is the distinct possibility that, if action is not taken to change the current trajectory, both countries will no longer represent a beacon of hope to those looking to better their lives and the lives of their children.

I have been a lucky beneficiary of the opportunities offered by both countries. I came from Greece to England to study when I was 16 years old and then spent almost 10 years in London writing. I then moved to the United States and have made a life here. But when I look at what has happened in both of my adopted countries, and at the path they’re currently headed down, I don’t see those same opportunities being offered.

In both countries, the economic debate has been hijacked by deficit and austerity hawks proposing spending cuts that will fall most heavily on the poor and on working families, even as millions continue to be out of work and both economies are barely growing.

In the U.S., nearly 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. In the U.K., 2.5 million are out of work.

For 2011, real wages in the U.K. are forecast to be roughly the same as they were back in 2005. And, in the wake of the first round of government belt-tightening, growth in the U.K. slowed to just 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2011.

In both the United States and Britain, there is a profound sense that the countries are on the wrong track. A Gallup poll from 2010 found that one in three Britons would like to leave the country, the highest proportion in all of Europe, narrowly topping Romania.

In a May 2011 poll, 69 percent of Americans said they were worried about having enough money to live comfortably in the next two or three years. 41 percent were worried about losing their home. 60 percent were worried about finding work. Nearly 60 percent thought budget cuts were being enacted unfairly, and over half thought their family’s financial situation was going to get worse over the next year.

Fortunately, although both countries share strikingly similar economic situations, they also share a similar foundation of resilience. The British stiff upper lip is merely the ancestor of the American can-do spirit. Additionally, the solutions I focus on in the latter sections of this book apply to both countries as well. While each nation needs to demand more of its leaders, the solutions increasingly are going to have to come from the bottom up.

And, in both countries, social media and community engagement are fueling this bottom-up dynamic. Real solutions are less likely to come from politicians than from millions of people in thousands of communities taking the initiative to share, connect, engage, and solve problems. This movement may be fueled by technology, but at its core is a real person connecting with another person. As I show in this book, by collectively reaching out to those in need around us—to our neighbors and our communities—we can take the first steps to modifying our current trajectory.

I wrote this book to turn a spotlight on both the problems and the solutions—and the very real consequences of not taking action. Both nations stand at a crossroads. Both were once undisputed superpowers. And both are now having to get used to a new reality in which, in many important ways, the power they enjoyed in the past has dissipated. But it would be tragic if the opportunity for upward mobility that both nations have historically afforded their citizens also became a thing of the past.

Moving forward in this new era, Britain—like America—will have to choose: connection or division; understanding or fear; reaching out or turning away.

The anger we rightly feel when looking at what’s happening in both the U.S. and the U.K. can lead us to either tap into our baser instincts or into the better angels of our nature. The future of each country depends on the choice we make.

PREFACE

Growing up, I remember walking to school in Athens past a statue of President Truman. The statue was a daily reminder of the magnificent nation responsible for, among other things, the Marshall Plan.

Everyone in Greece either had a family member, or, like my family, a friend, who’d left to find a better life in America. That was the phrase everyone associated with America: “a better life.” America was a place you could go to work really hard, make a good living, and even send money back home—a better life.

I was sixteen when I first came to America as part of a program called the Experiment in International Living. I spent the summer in York, Pennsylvania, staying with four different families. I went back to Athens, and then soon went on to Cambridge and London. But part of me remained in America.

When I came back in 1980, I knew that this time it would be for good. Thirty years later, there’s still no other place I’d rather live. Over that time, one of the characteristics I’ve come to love the most about my adopted country is its optimism. In fact, it melded perfectly with my own Greek temperament: Zorba the Greek meets the American spirit. The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini1 wrote that America “is alarmingly optimistic, compassionate, incredibly generous . . . It was a spiritual wind that drove Americans irresistibly ahead from the beginning.” The only downside of the optimistic spirit is that it can sometimes prevent us from seeing what is unfolding until it’s too late.

In recent years, as the evidence mounted about the road we’re on as a country—one that I was sure would prove disastrous if we failed to course-correct in time—I was conflicted. I wanted to believe everything would turn out okay, as it has so often in the past. But the stubborn facts kept nagging at me as the warning signs became more and more numerous. I had to choose whether to sound like Cassandra or fall back on a double dose of the congenital optimism of both my native and adopted countries and assume it was all just another speed bump on the road to a “more perfect union.” It’s never fun being Cassandra. But remember, Cassandra ended up being right. And the Trojans, who remained blissfully blind to her warnings, ended up being very wrong and very dead.

So, yes, as I look around at our great, sprawling country, we are obviously not yet a Third World nation. But we are well on our way. This is the unspoken fear of so many out-of-work Americans and those still at work but anxious about their futures and the futures of their children. My goal for this book is to sound the alarm so that we never do become “Third World America.”

“America,” Winston Churchill reportedly said2, “can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities.” Well, we have exhausted a lot of possibilities, and for millions of the unemployed, the underemployed, the ones whose homes have been foreclosed, and the ones who’ve declared bankruptcy or can’t pay their credit card bills, the pro cess has already been very painful. It’s time now to do the right things.

The book closes on an optimistic note. Part 5 is about many of those right things being done around the country. Because in the end, despite the acts of greed, cronyism, and disregard for the public interest committed by both business and political leaders, I am ultimately heartened by the resilience, creativity, and largely unheralded acts of compassion and empathy that I see among Americans everywhere. Turning our country around will take the concerted effort of citizens all across America, standing up for themselves, their families, and their communities—both demanding change and embodying it—and keeping the promise of the American Dream alive for future generations.

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