Originally posted by @sh76
I would add also that the the world economy in general and the economy of that country that elected the "absolute and dangerous fool" in particular are stronger than ever and growing at a torrid pace and that scientific and cultural achievement are at all-time highs.
I don't think there is a "center of the world" right now, though if you did have to choose ...[text shortened]... he two clearest candidates, but if the US and UK are those centers, the world will be just fine.
In the UK (whose capital is alleged to be one of the candidates for world city), economic growth has not translated into wage growth for year; my salary has declined by 15% relative to inflation in the last decade. I have a relatively privileged and secure job; most of my compatriots are facing the worst job insecurity since the 1930s. Zero hours contracts are the norm for many workers, making it impossible for young people to plan futures, buy property, or have children. What can it mean to speak of an economy "doing fine" when economic growth isn't translating into increased wealth or greater job security for the majority of a country's citizens?
In the alleged possible centre of the world, London, even renting property is out of reach of vital workers such as nurses, while house ownership is increasingly the preserve of those who have inherited wealth or whose parents can give them an advance on their inheritance. Students graduate with a lifetime of debt when their parents had been able to take a free university education for granted.
The extreme right is more powerful than at any time since 1945, and decent, civilised, moderate religion has given way to destructive fundamentalism.
Scientific achievement has brought us to a situation where we could all be dead next week from nuclear war, or where our grandchildren could be dead from the effects of global warming. Even in the field of medicine, where many advances continue to be made, we're facing a return to an age when bacterial infection kills due to promiscuous overuse of antibiotics.
It's a more subjective matter, but I'm not aware of any 21st-century cultural achievements that have come close to matching the beauty, intelligence and complexity of Shakespeare, Vermeer, Mozart or Tolstoy. And during the last 80 years, once proud cities have become messes of anonymous high rise and squalid slums; some of this happened through war, and, given the circumstances, was perhaps unavoidable, but the erosion and widespread destruction in the postwar years of the historic city centres of Europe and Asia is perhaps as great a cultural crime as has ever been committed in time of peace.
The 21st century is a dystopia. Has there been another time in the history of the Western world when younger generations could expect to be less well off than their parents? Perhaps not since the fall of Rome!
The Earth is moving clockwise
06 Jan '18 11:29
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