October 27, 2009 03:38 PM UTC

Why is America on the Decline?

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• by: Sharon Hanson

A once powerful and gracious nation who use to be kind and take care of the less fortunate and experienced great prosperity as a result has now become a nation of self-centered narcissistic cry-babies who only care about themselves.  It always amazes me how the general public can be so easily led. To give up your rights to the powerful to satiate your inner hate is not productive nor will it produce prosperity.

Here’s a recent article regarding the decline of the once great and powerful but also kind United States.

9 Signs of America in Decline

By RICK NEWMAN

Posted: October 26, 2009

The sky isn’t falling, exactly. America isn’t on a fast track to irrelevance. Even in a state of total neglect, we could probably shamble along as a disheveled superpower for a few more decades.

But all empires end, and the warning signs of American decline seem to be blinking more consistently. In the latest annual “prosperity index” published by the Legatum Institute, a London-based research firm, the United States ranks as the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That’s five notches lower than last year, when America ranked No. 4. The drop might seem inconsequential, especially in the midst of a grueling recession-except that most of the world has endured the same recession, and other countries are bouncing back faster.

China and India have recovered smartly from the recession, for example. Brazil seems to be barreling ahead. Australia is growing faster than expected, prompting worry among government officials who fear they may have overstimulated the economy. The United States, meanwhile, is muddling through a weak, jobless recovery, and we have a lot of problems that could make prosperity feel elusive for a long time.

Real household income in America has flat-lined, for instance, which means many middle-class families are barely keeping up with inflation. The exploding federal deficit hamstrings the government’s ability to help. Healthcare is too expensive, America’s manufacturing base is eroding, and two open-ended foreign wars are draining the national treasury. This is not a recipe for building national wealth.

There are still millions of diligent, innovative Americans who could help the nation dig out of its hole. But overall, the American population is falling behind, by a variety of measures. Here are some of them:

http://www.usnews.com/money/bl…