This book is prompted by a paradox.
At a time when American culture has never been more pervasive and at a time when America itself has become the hyperactive hegemonic power, Morris Berman nonetheless argues that as a civilisation, and even as a state, it is showing signs of die-back. On the surface, all points to a kind of renewal but ‘a superficial vitality’, he writes, ‘is hardly the same thing as a healthy culture. A false dawn is not a real one’.
There are four particular characteristics of contemporary America that feed Berman’s pessimism. The first is the increasing social and economic inequality. We are becoming used to statistics like those which point to the fact that up till 1973, all levels of society benefited, more or less, from a rise in real wages; since 1973, it has only been the highest quintile. The bottom 40 per cent has actually experienced a decline in real income. And whereas in 1973 the typical CEO of a large company earned about 40 times that of a typical worker, today it would not be uncommon for that figure to be 400 times as much.
Less well known is that since 1979, some 43 million jobs have gone in America. The squeeze is on. Desperate for any work at all, the underclass glumly accept worsening conditions and wages knowing that Third World people may take their jobs, either by coming to America, or by staying at home, where the jobs are increasingly outsourced. Meanwhile America itself, with its increase in gated communities and visibly entrenched privilege, takes on more and more of a Third World aspect.
The second factor to be noted—and one that is now in evidence here—is the increasing incapacity of the state to handle support programs and manage growing socioeconomic problems. In America, predictions more alarming than Peter Costello’s, warn that Social Security will become insolvent by 2004, with the hospital insurance part of Medicare going bust by 2015. Partly this is due to the problem Costello identified here: life expectancy is rising, fertility rates are falling. This is not helped by an American national debt that continues to accelerate, or by an electorate which doesn’t want taxes to
increase—but isn’t happy about lower benefits, either!
Berman’s next factor is perhaps the most devastating, ‘the collapse of American intelligence’. There are many horror stories here, of a kind more or less familiar already.