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Although some observers are still predicting a substantial national recovery, a more sobering factual analysis clearly points in the opposite direction. Did the Bible foresee America's rise to world leadership and its subsequent national decline more than two millennia ago?
What we call the American Dream is fading into the distant sunset. The relatively few encouraging signs-such as the shale oil and gas bonanza-are being overshadowed by many disturbing trends in the opposite direction.
Why is this great nation, with seemingly so much promise for the future, heading inexorably into a box canyon of so many sorrows with no apparent way out? Are we ourselves as a people the basic cause by the way we are currently conducting our lives?
Many citizens vaguely realize that our massive debt difficulties lie at the heart of our present national plight. Several years ago Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, observed:
"The U.S. savings rate is zero; the current account deficit, the trade deficit and the budget deficit are high; the median income is flat; and commitments for entitlements are unsustainable" ("The Future of American Power," Foreign Affairs, May-June 2008, p. 29).
Since then matters have worsened. British author Edward Luce stated of the years 2009 to 2011: "Median household income fell during that period by an astonishing 6.7 percent" ( Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline, 2012, p. 272).
Two other authors jointly warned of tough days ahead if we don't mend our financial habits soon: "The United States is fast approaching a historic turning point; either it will act to get its fiscal house in order, thereby restoring the prerequisites of its primacy in the world, or it will fail to do so and suffer both the domestic and international consequences" (Roger Altman and Richard Haass,"American Profligacy and American Power," Foreign Affairs, November-December 2010).
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