1. Introduction
Many of politicians and journalists are asking the puzzling question: why average Americans so are not satisfied with today’s growing economy (Harris & Sojourner, 2024). There is a very simple answer! Unfortunately, the growth of GDP and financial markets is no longer associated with the growth of American well-being. These two important economic parameters, alas, do not in any way reflect the benefits that exist outside the market: poverty level, health of the population, access to medical services, access to quality education, personal security, etc. For example, the seven largest tech megacompanies in the US (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla) make up 26% of the S&P 500 index (Scheld, 2023). On the other hand, small and medium-sized businesses account for two-thirds of jobs and generate almost half of economic activity in the US, but they have minimal (close to zero) representation in the stock market (Doré, 2019). The same picture is for tax revenues to the US budget 2021: individual taxes are 42%—it is the most important tax revenue source for the US, but corporate income taxes accounted for 6% only of total U.S. tax revenue (Bunn & Weigel, 2023).
Here is a clear example. In 2023, US GDP was 27.3 trillion USD, and Norway GDP was only 485.5 billion USD, i.e. 56 times less. However:
A) Murder rates (per 100 k people) in 2022 for the US was 6.38, and for Norway—0.55 (World Population Review, 2024), i.e. in the US there are 11.6 times more murders than in Norway;
B) The United States doesn’t have a federal law requiring paid leave for women during pregnancy and breastfeeding; good employers give new mothers 2 - 3 paid weeks. For comparison, obligatory paid leave for such women in Norway—6 months, plus 3 years of unpaid leave but with job security. Also, infant mortality (per 1000 newborn children) in the US equals 5.6, in Norway—2 (for more details see section 2.5);
C) About 1 in 4 U.S. adults over 50 say they have no retirement savings (Hussein, 2024). Present housing, medical, and high education costs hinders people being unable to save for retirement. In contrast, Norway has created a national pension fund; as of August 2024, every Norwegian citizen has about 307,000 USD there (Wikipedia, Government Pension Fund of Norway, 2024).
Even from this brief analysis, it is clear that the interests of small and medium-sized businesses (including startups) and working Americans, but not corporations, should be the top priority for the US governments and top politicians at all levels. Hundreds of articles in scientific journals and mass media, as well as dozens of books have been written about individual political, economic and social problems of the US (see, for example, Long, 2008). However, today there is a need to consider all these problems that have been unsolvable for decades together as a diagnosis of a serious illness of American society. Average trust in American institutions has fallen below 30% of respondents (Saad, 2023). All these problems that cannot be solved due to: the deadlocked confrontation between the two leading political parties in the United States; the inefficiency management in the US at all levels; a sharp decline in the level of the current US national elite. All this together led America to a partial loss of authority and leadership in the world. This article is not so much about how to solve America’s problems, but rather about how the Great America is gradually ceasing to be great.
Here is another clear example: A) More than half of the world unites around China, ignoring America; first of all, China has signed cooperation agreements under the “One Belt One Road Initiative” (BRI or B&R) with 149 countries and 31 international organizations (Wikipedia, 2024); Shanghai Cooperation Organization—32 countries as members and observers; [BRICS+]—21 countries as members and applicants; B) In 1973, about 85% of global financial reserves were in US dollars; in 2023, this has already fallen up to 58% (Wolf, 2023).
2. Discussion
The US state border is absolutely full of holes and is guarded very poorly. In recent years (2021-2023), the number of incidents at the US border has exceeded 2 million per year, see Figure 1 (Wu, 2023). FAIR estimates that as of June 2023, there are approximately 16 million undocumented (or with improper documents) immigrants living in the United States (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2023). At the same time, according to an analysis by the US Chamber of Commerce and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, traditional employers looking for workers as of December 2022 have huge unfilled vacancies: 65% in durable goods manufacturing, 40% in wholesale and retail trade, 55% in leisure and entertainment; McKinsey projects a shortage of about 300,000 engineers and 90,000 skilled technicians in the United States by 2030; according to a Deloitte report, the US semiconductor industry could face a shortage of approximately 70,000 - 90,000 workers over the next few years; McKinsey also predicts that by 2025, the US could face a shortage of between 200,000 and 450,000 registered nurses; also, there will be a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers in the US in 2025 (Ferguson & Hoover, 2023). It would seem that here is a reasonable solution to this problem: A) Completely close the US borders to illegal immigrants (but Democrats are against it); B) Create full job listings for each state to issue work visas to foreign citizens of appropriate qualifications (but Republicans are against it). And so it is with all the problems of America. i.e. NO WAY!
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Figure 1. Annual southwestern border apprehension (Sources: U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Wu, 2023).
The leaky US-Mexico border and the flow of illegal immigrants is closely linked to the opioid crisis in the US. It is impossible to separate the drug crisis from the immigration issue. Almost the entire US-Mexico border is controlled by Mexican drug cartels. The Cartels force all undocumented persons to pay to traverse the Mexico-USA boundary either in cash or they ferry drugs. Jim Chilton is rancher from Arizona (DuHamel, 2024); part of his ranch is the international boundary for about five miles with Mexico. He said that approximately 100 trails traversing his ranch, only five have hidden motion-activated cameras. But even on these five paths, since 2021 up to 2024, these cameras have recorded evidence of 3050 images of unlawful border crossers. There were men and they were wearing identical backpacks. They were drug couriers. And we almost never saw Patrols there. In addition, Mexican Cartel scouts with satellite phones and other military-grade equipment occupied strategically-selected hilltops for dozens of miles inside Arizona including on our ranch. Since Border Patrol agents are focused on processing a massive invasion of economic asylum seekers, skillfully organized by the Cartels that control the Mexico-US border, hundreds of trials for pack drug men remain uncontrolled. Conclusion: No border patrols can cope with the Cartels, who actually control the US border; for this, America needs a full-fledged Border Troops with armored vehicles, helicopters, drones, speedboats, etc. which must thoroughly patrol border 24/7.
It’s no wonder that there are more than 100,000 deaths per year in the US from opioid overdose—Figure 2, Figure 3 (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2023; AZ Defenders, 2023) Since 2000, nearly 1 million American people have died of a drug overdose; as of 2020, over 37 million American people 12 and older actively used illicit drug-substances (Miller, 2023). Tougher penalties have proven ineffective. In 2014, 16% of prisoners in the US (206,300 people) were serving drug-related sentences, but the prevalence of drug use and availability has only increased (Pew Research Center, 2018) (the US could at least federal decriminalize marijuana/cannabis—today cannabis sits in the US federal government’s drug list in the same category as heroin; but marijuana should be regulated like tobacco and alcohol). In addition, traditional “natural” drugs are rapidly being replaced by synthetic ones (mainly fentanyl and methamphetamine, which are tens of times stronger and more dangerous and much more difficult to detect them) (AZ Defenders, 2023)—Figure 3 (the precursors of fentanyl and methamphetamine arrive from China to Mexican seaports, processed in Mexican drug-labs, then drugs hidden inside Mexican imports and in the personal belongings of emigrants crossing the US border). Drugs are penetrating into the US easily and en masse, as if the US has no borders at all. In real, tens of thousands of Americans under 35 years of age are in jail/prison for decades for one small bag of a drug, but those who produce it in thousands of tons and deliver it to the United States through porous borders, i.e. drug mafia bosses—enjoy life in their villas. The global drug mafia has defeated Great America.
The US national debt and trade deficit. In 2023, the US national debt was about $34 trillion, about 120% GDP, i.e., the enterprise “America” is hopelessly unprofitable—see Figure 4 (Richter, 2022). The US federal government spends significantly more money than it raises in taxes. The main problem of the US is that
Figure 2. National drug-involved overdose death (Sources: National Institute on Drug Abuse; Drug Overdose, 2023).
Figure 3. Distribution of drug types in the US (2021) (Sources: Drug Enforcement Administration; AZ Defenders, 2023).
America, for a long time, had too few new ideas and breakthroughs so that Americans’ expenses on housing, health care, and education cease to be prohibitively expensive. In fiscal year 2023, nearly 90 million Americans relied on health care benefits through Medicare, 79.5 million people were enrolled in Medicaid, total costs for these programs are about 2 trillion dollars. According to the US government report on May 6, 2024, after 2035 the US Social Security program, Medicare and Medicaid programs will run a huge shortage of cash. But Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), taken together, provide insurance for about 168 million people—half the American population. In 2024, about 15% of all federal spending ($882 billion) will cover interest payments on national debt—that’s equivalent to the US defense budget. Obviously, we need to significantly reduce the cost of medical, housing, and education services through scientific and technological breakthroughs, but no one is doing this (for example, low cost genetic medicine, low cost education using artificial intelligence, low cost 1 - 3 storey housing built using giant 3D printers, etc.). The electric light bulb did not appear as a result of the modernization of the wax candle!
Democratic legislators are striving to raise taxes and increase government spending; Republican legislators are trying to lower taxes and reduce government spending. The problem is insoluble! But neither of them is proposing a way to increase budget revenues and reduce the spending of American families through technological breakthroughs, because that requires, first, a completely different level of intelligence, second, deep cooperation between the two bossy US political parties, which instead are stuck in a dead-end political confrontation.
A parallel problem is the huge US trade deficit: the largest being with China (−$242 billion), Mexico (−$141 billion), and Vietnam (−$100 billion) (Gave, 2024). Herewith, the US goods trade deficit in 2024 (the goods gap with the world) reached a record amount of $1.21 trillion (Rapoza, 2025). But China, on the contrary, had a trade surplus of over 1 trillion USD in 2024. It seems, free trade ideas work poorly not only in the 21st century, it seems, for America they have always been harmful. So, Alexander Hamilton, in his 1791 Report on Manufactures, asked, “In what can [the public purse] be so useful as in prompting and improving the efforts of industry?” Henry Clay, Secretary of State by the 2hd US president (1797-1801) John Adams jeering on the Senate floor, “Free trade! Free trade! The call for free trade, is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child.” These two—Hamilton and Clay—were, as is obvious today, much smarter and more far-sighted than all the American Nobel laureates in economics! Look: since 1992, the United States has accumulated $15 trillion in trade debt—goods and services consumed by Americans for which nothing was produced in return; roughly 2 million jobs were lost in national industries in the United States between 1997 and 2011 Andy Grove who led Intel in its heyday, warned about the folly of believing that a nation could offshore manufacturing while keeping innovation at home and innovations have gone to China along with production (Cass, 2024).
Fitch Ratings has downgraded the US Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) from “AAA” to “AA+”; also Moody’s, at the end of 2023, has lowered the US government’s credit ratings outlook from “stable” to “negative”; and Standard & Poor’s lowered the US score to AA+ back in 2011. The US economy is no longer sustainable.
The US official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people in poverty. The SPM (Supplemental Poverty Measure) child poverty rate more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022 (The Project to raise American’s Pay, 2024). (The family’s 2023 poverty threshold was $37,275/year—for a full family with two children). More than 2.5 million are homeless. This can happen to anyone, - Ms. Beltran, homeless with two children, said. - Flooding, fire, the loss of a job—all it takes is one unexpected problem to cause a person to end up homeless.” This is a direct consequence of a sharp increase in social inequality in the US. “Over the past 45 years, practically all economic gains in the United States have gone to top earners, bypassing everyday workers and leaving the wages of
(a) (b)
Figure 4. US national debt - dollar amount and share of GDP. (Sources: US Treasure Department; Richter, 2022; Leonhardt, 2024).
most hardworking Americans flat. Stagnant pay has lowered living standards and increased reliance on public assistance” (Shrider & Creamer, 2022) (see Figure 5). In addition, over the past three years, prices of some basic goods growth have significantly outpaced average inflation (Figure 6) (Richter, 2023). Another factor is the severe housing crisis: home prices are up about 60 percent over the past decade (Dougherty, 2024). In addition, recent New York Fed data (Q1 2024) showed the total household debt (i.e. debt of hardworking Americans!) reaches $184 billion (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2024).
Figure 5. Comparing productivity growth with hourly wages. (Sources: Economic Policy Institute; Shrider & Creamer, 2022).
(a) (b)
Figure 6. US Consumer Price Index (CPI) (Source: Richter, 2023).
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd US president: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” (Inaugural address for second term, Jun. 20, 1937)
Warren Buffett, the best-known investors and billionaire in the world: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning” (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/123058-there-s-class-warfare-all-right-but-it-s-my-class-the).
The US healthcare system is one of the most ineffective (it ranks only 38th amid high-income countries) but the most expensive in the world (Shmerling, 2021). As mentioned in Section 3, in fiscal year 2023, nearly 90 million Americans relied on health care benefits through Medicare, 79.5 million people were enrolled in Medicaid, and their total spending is about 2 trillion dollars. These enormous expenses take place because the only concern of the American healthcare system is maximizing the profits of private pharmaceutical and medical companies. So, UnitedHealth Group, the biggest private health insurer in the U.S., reported $371.6 billion in revenue in 2023 (Japsen, 2024); at the same time, its branch UnitedHealthcare has an exorbitant requests denial rate of one-third (32%) of all claims (Loe, 2024). Today, we have the lowest life expectancy, worse than in most high-income countries—Figure 7 (Shmerling, 2021; Etehad & Kim, 2017). Also, in the various American states adult obesity rates are from 25 up to 40% (hamburgers, pizza, chips, fries, sweet bakery, soda drinks, etc.—bon appetit!)
The United States is the only developed country without a federal law requiring paid leave for women during pregnancy and breastfeeding (Paycor, 2023). That is why 80% of the US working women don’t have paid leave after the birth of a child. Good employers give other mothers no more than 2 - 3 paid weeks. (For comparison, paid leave for such women in Scandinavia—an average of 6 months, plus 3 years of unpaid leave but with job security). No wonder that infant mortality (per 1000 newborn children) in the US—one of the highest among developed countries: it equals 5.6 (World Bank Group, 2022) (for comparison, in Norway—2, it is 2.8 times less). Conclusion: the US cares little at all about its motherhood and infants.
There is a dire need for large-scale health care reform in the US that is long overdue. But the trouble with America is that whatever the Democrats propose, the Republicans will reject; whatever the Republicans propose, the Democrats will reject...
(a) (b)
Figure 7. Annual health spending per person and Life expectancy by country. (Sources: World Bank data; Shmerling, 2021; Etehad & Kim, 2017).
Primary school education in the US is appallingly low quality (Goldstein, 2023). The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-old students (9th or 10th grade of the US high school) around the world. In 2018, the U.S. students placed 11th out of 79 countries in school-based humanitarian sciences. They did much worse in math, ranking 30th (Desilver, 2017). With such low levels of education in American elementary, middle, and high schools, the United States in the future will inevitably lag behind China in innovative technologies, especially against the backdrop of China’s transition to intensified teaching math and science for children and teens 7 - 14 years, plus high training of their teacher for all grades (Cavanagh, 2006). The growing economic might of China and India is due exactly to its ability to graduate school-child with a high level of knowledge with math. science, and engineering. It is not surprising that, in recent years, 78% of specialists from India and 12% Chinese won the H-1B visa (H-1B is a visa that allows highly qualified scientists and engineers to work in the US—about 100,000/year) (Norton & Debusmann, 2024). Besides that, in the US, in 2023, student loan debt was about $1.77 trillion (Hanson, 2024) and graduates’ salaries will never cover this debt for most of them—it means for the US young people the economic inexpediency of quality education. Vivek Ramaswamy, a top official in the new President Trump administration, wrote on the X network (on Dec. 2024): “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd US president once said: “Learning is the bridge from the past to the future.” However, the bridge that the American primary school education system is building for its youth is more like a bridge to the past... Here is a clear example: In early 2025, a Chinese AI free app “DeepSeek-R1” (it was developed by a small startup from a Chinese province) has beaten the US-based ChatGPT to become the top-rated free app in the Apple App Store in the US, UK and, of course, China (Weber, 2025). This has caused panic among investors in the US Silicon Valley, as DeepSeek-R1 has challenged the widely held belief that the US is the undisputed leader in AI technology. China will inevitably win the intellectual competition with the US unless America makes a radical improvement in its school education.
America’s infrastructure is in complete disrepair and real investments there are also falling (Figure 8) (While & Crane, 2015). “Most of our road, rail, water, sewer, electric power, wired telephone, and other distributed systems infrastructure are old and in need of repair; our ports, airports, and rail terminals built, mostly, 60 - 80 years ago and is in dire need of repair and replacement; many our water are archaic, ill designed, badly run, and poorly maintained” (Frankel, 2007) In the US, 15,000 dams, hundreds of drainage systems, and most of 617,000 bridges (large and small, especially rural bridges) require repair; the US system of drinking water (about two million mile) and 800,000-mile sewer system were treatment plants working at over capacity (McBride et al., 2023; Greenberg, 2023) Americans’ trips to work in cars, buses and subways, and their trips to other cities on planes, trains, and cars are becoming longer, less comfortable, and more expensive.
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Figure 8. Total US investment in infrastructure. (Sources: BEA; Moody’s Analytics; While & Crane, 2015).
America’s housing Infrastructure. There is a severe housing crisis in America today. So, America has 3.8 million fewer homes than the American people need; 77% of Americans agree with this (CAP, 2024). The inadequate number of newly built new homes and nonluxury rental units provokes skyrocketing costs. The article (CAP, 2024) states: “This supply shortage creates conditions for wealthy investors, private equity groups, and corporate property managers to exploit the tight market, squeezing excess profits from renters (In addition, these corporations have significant tax benefits); by 2030, corporations and private equity firms could own about 40% of all single-family rentals.” And here in the American housing market, it is corporate greed that is causing problems again! At the same time, America lags behind China in 3d-printing houses. Already 10 years ago a Chinese 3D printing company, Yingchuang Building Technique (WinSun), started doing enormous waves in the mass media of China (Perry, 2018): “Chinese Firm 3D Prints 10 Homes in 24 Hours”; “WinSun 3D Prints 5-Story Apartment Building and Villa”; “World’s First Office Building 3D Printed in Dubai”; “Winsun completes world’s first, 500 meters long, 3D printed river revetment wall.” Also, America is behind China, Japan, and even Scandinavia in the production of so-called “modular housing”—this is the quick and inexpensive assembly of residential buildings from factory elements on a ready-made foundation. Although its initiator in the USA back in 1969 was HUD Secretary George Romney, today such housing construction in the USA is practically zero, and, for example, in Sweden it is 45% of new housing (Hamja, 2024).
America’s Energy Infrastructure. America remains committed to fossil fuels and too slow is transitioning to green energy. So, in 2023, China produced 31% of global renewable electricity, followed by the United States (11%); the total power generation capacity for renewable energy sources in China is about 54% from total capacity, and USA, only 21% (Wiatros-Motyka, 2023; Hilton, 2024). America already hopelessly lost production of batteries and electric vehicles race for world leadership to China as well as SMNRs (Advanced Small Modular Nuclear Reactors) race. For example, by the end of 2024, the share of electric vehicles in China will be 45%, while in Europe, 25%, and in the USA, only 11% (Int. Energy Agency, 2024). Also, new controlled fusion startups sprout across China. China’s EAST tokamak in Hefei held plasma stable at 70 million degrees Celsius—five times hotter than the core of the sun—for more than 17 minutes, a world record and an objectively astonishing breakthrough (Dewan & Nilsen, 2024).
As for clean energy, its benefits go far beyond “fighting climate change”. Clean, or green, energy such as solar and wind energy, unlike fossil fuel, does not need to be geological explored in the subsoil, or extracted, or enriching/refining (with the formation of thousands of tons of slag and sludge), does not need to be transported to a thermal power plant, does not need to be burned in boilers to generating steam. These are huge, gigantic technological and financial advantages, but they are rarely mentioned.
The US’s outdated Defense. The striking force of 21st century warfare is unmanned aerial vehicles and underwater vehicles; AI can coordinate attacks by groups of hundreds of drones (especially fiber optic fpv-drones). But shooting down these cheap drones requires very expensive air defense systems. By the way, China controls almost 80% of the world market for commercial drones (which can easily be converted into combat drones). The second component of modern warfare is the suppression of the enemy’s satellite, cellular, and cable communications (including undersea cables), hacking its computer and cellphone networks. The infantry attacks in numerous scattered small groups using small armored vehicles, and sometimes just usual vehicles—motorcycles, quad bikes, pickup trucks. And so on… The US is still spending tens of billions of dollars on the newest aircraft carriers (the last one—13 billion USD), newest tank AbramsX, and 6th generation fighters but these methods of warfare with an equal enemy are out of date! (For example, a huge and unwieldy American aircraft carrier, which is a formidable adversary for the Houthis, would be incapacitated in the first hours of battle in a war with Russia or China). Another example: before Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. could build about 14,400 of the artillery shells per month; however, it turned out that in the war with Russia, Ukraine spends these 14,400 in 48 - 72 hours of combat (Judson, 2024). Sir Winston Churchill: “The War Office is always preparing for the past war”.
America and Europe loudly declare: we do not want to drag NATO into a conflict with Russia. But since 2022, Russia has been waging an open war against NATO countries: extensive cyberattacks on critical facilities, provocations on the border with Poland and the Baltic States, brazen interference in elections, explosions and arsons of warehouses and cargo planes, damage to communication cables, jamming of GPS signals, launching recce drones over European countries, planning assassinations of European top managers. Ukraine as in 1941 is once again fighting for its (and European!) freedom, but Europe and America as in 1938 is once again trying “to coax” the next European (now Kremlin) Hitler. Remember how it all ended for Europe and all world in 1938...
Civilized political competition in the US has turned into a dead-end political confront. America is divided into two irreconcilable camps risks becoming into Disunited States of America. The US Legislators and top politicians spend all their resources on this dead-end political standoff, and they have nothing left time, energy, and brains for solving real devastating problems of America. America’s friends are losing hope in our country, and America’s enemies are losing fear of it. Four-star general Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense: “The cost of US global leadership is high; but the cost of the US giving up leadership will be much higher.”
3. Conclusion
21st century America has stopped investing in the its future. It only wastes the remaining resources of its past achievements.
21st century America is no longer an example of efficient economics and reliable partner.
Corporate greed is the significant cause of many of America’s economic and social problems.
The high cost of housing, health care, child care, college and university education is driving up the poverty rate of Americans.
America’s small and medium-sized businesses (including startups) enjoy far less support and protection than its multinational corporations.
Alarm! America is beginning to lose the fight for global leadership on Earth and in Space to China.
America is not ready for a long war with an equal enemy. Putin’s victory in aggression against Ukraine will mean that, firstly, the US and the EU, American military power and NATO are unable to stop Putin. Secondly, for the entire world this will be evidence that the entire world order under the auspices of the UN has truly collapsed completely and finally.
If we all really want to live in the Great America, we all, starting with the Legislators and the Executive Power at all levels, must unite to solve the US devastating problems, because although we have two major irreconcilable political parties and many millions of their irreconcilable supporters, but we have only one Homeland.
Financial Declaration
The author declare that no funds, grants, or other financial support were received during the creating of this manuscript.
Data Availability
Data sharing is not applicable as no new data were generated or analyzed during this study.