It's Always Been The Economy, Stupid

The greatest problem in American politics is its perennial inability to properly manage the economy. The main reason for this failure is that the current capitalist model is based upon constant, robust growth. To grow the economy and spur a demand for goods and services, a population must constantly grow. This population-demand-growth economy has resulted in a roller coaster effect upon the economic well being since the nation's inception. Based upon the 18th century British model of mercantilism, American capitalism discarded some of the cumbersome aspects of its British counterpart and was bolstered by the continent's vast natural resources that were exploited by waves of immigrants. At first, America was an agrarian based economy importing most of its manufactures. As New England grew and realized the potential of its river systems through damming, a manufacturing based economy grew in the Northeast. Wealthy owners teamed with local politicians to maintain a low wage work force and protective tariffs. This eventually led to a disparity between the northern industrial economy and the slave based southern economy; especially after the invention of the steam engine. The steam engine opened routes that expanded the nation westward and spurred demand for American made goods. Tariffs and the slave based economy of the southern states eventually led to the Civil War. After the war, northern manufacturers moved many of their factories south where labor costs were cheap and where Reconstruction helped to expand demand for goods. Once coal replaced wood as the main energy source, American railroad and maritime ventures fully exploited the import/export trade and filled the interior of the nation with immigrants displacing the Native American population and forcing the continental boundaries to become placed where they are today. Oil, and its ability to provide improved steam engines led to the internal combustion engine that led to the trucking industry and the Interstate Highway system. This brought the United States to its manufacturing height with blue collar jobs replacing farm jobs as the mainstay of the population. It also brought the country into conflict with aging European colonial powers and eventually dragged America into two world wars that brought about the end of the divine right of kingship, facism, and led to the Cold War. The Cold War led to the Space Race and robotic exploration of the Solar System, but all at a cost. All three were in effect wars for control of the world's carbon based energy supplies. The Soviet Union's contribution to the defeat of the Nazis and its implosion in the 1990s inadvertently brought about America's metamorphosis as the world's sole military super power which in turn brought about an arrogance never before witnessed in American politics. We have disengaged from Iraq, a country that could fall into disarry before the year is out, and fought the Taliban to a stalemate in Central Asia where the last of the world's vast natural gas fields lay that do not require the destructive method called fracking to extract, but do require a long pipeline through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, Pakistan for export to America and other nations. The world's population has surpassed seven billion, but it is now evident that the world's natural resources are not limitless, nor are they one nation's for the taking. This small speck of dust we call home is the only habitable planet that safely shelters humankind in our Solar System. We have developed nuclear energy, but have yet to figure how to safely recycle or discard its waste. Oil and coal are finite commodities. Manufacturing and farm jobs will never employ the numbers of workers they once did as they have become computerized and mechanized. Our religious leaders demand large families and preach the ridiculous notion that family planning is counter to God's teachings as if they have a direct phone line to the mind of God. It is time to get serious about overpopulation and to change the economic model that drives the need for demand for goods and services through excessive population with one that is built upon a foundation of sustainability and sane population levels. Most visitors to the United States marvel at how much we have in terms of land and goods. If we multiply like ants on the forest floor and wipe out our resources we will have to turn to a war economy to reset the population to accomodate economic demand. That model is barbaric and benefits few and must be changed.