Declining Positive Sentiment on the Future of the US Economy

Since we’re in the mood, let’s begin today with a question: Do you think your kids or grandkids will be worse off than you?

We’ll give you a moment to think about it.

[One moment]

Fifty-seven percent of Americans responding to a similar question posed by The Hill predict today’s young people won’t live better lives than their parents.

In addition, 69% believe the nation is “in decline,” and 49% are “very worried” about the nation’s future. Another 34% say they’re only “somewhat worried.”

What’s most striking about these numbers is how banal they’ve become. No fewer than eight polls conducted this month have asked people whether the nation is on the “right track” or the “wrong track.”

The numbers are startling in their consistency, between 73-81%.

A small item to illustrate the larger picture: Last week, a government commission wrapped up three years of work looking into the proverbial “waste, fraud and abuse” among government contractors in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It concluded the government “misspent” between $31-60 billion.

Where did it go?

You’re not allowed to know for 20 more years. The records won’t be available for public review at the National Archives until 2031, because they contain “sensitive information.”

“The ‘ruling junta’ governing the US,” comments our friend Ralph Benko from the Lehrman Institute, “seems to have forgotten an axiom critical to its legitimacy: ‘the consent of the governed.’

“Americans of all parties and ideologies bitterly cling to a fundamental American principle, stated in the Declaration of Independence, that we ‘are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,’…and ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’”

“A supermajority says that their intention,” says Benko, summing up the polling data, “their well-being and their very dignity are being violated.”

Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning