By Daniel Rossides E xceptionalist ideology (America's basis in individual freedom makes it different and better than ethnically based societies) is so powerful that few Americans are aware that their society leads the developed world in virtually all social pathologies and inefficiencies in many cases by a wide margin and in many cases lagging behind developing nations. Because of its unbalanced power structure, the United States leads in income and wealth inequality, inequalities that exist both before and after taxes and after taking demography and government transfers into account. America has the developed world's highest rates of elderly, adult, child, and deep poverty, the poorest record in worker rights, and has a longer work week. Twenty percent of working age males are out of the labor force and yet corporate profits are the highest on record. How is that possible you ask the answer is the weakness of American democracy? America leads in worker accidents and deaths and lags behind other developed nations in protecting against noise damage. In a recent study it was last in social mobihty it is not the land of opportunity but like many others, simply a land of opportunity (and far from being a leader). Official records indicate that the United States has a moderately competitive productivity rate but because the productivity rate is derived from the GDP, which counts America's outsized pathologies and inefficiencies as economic growth, a real picture of productivity would put the United States last. And for the first time in its history, and unlike other developed societies, economic/ productivity growth has been disconnected from the large majority of the population. That means that the standard of living has stagnated for most, and the tattered safety net is faihng the poor in economic downturns and no longer benefits them in upturns. It means that the United States, alone of the developed nations, is funneling all economic surplus upward, unshared with workers or the general public. It also means that the reason given for the massive upward transfer (productivity and economic growth would flourish if producers are favored) is false. America's family homicide, wife beating, and child abuse rates are far higher than the rest of the developed world. In any given year, 25,000 Americans are killed in America's family homicide, wife beating, and child abuse rates are far higher than the rest of the developed world. family arguments. One million children (in one estimate) run away from home every year. The streets, parks, and shelters of America's cities are filled with homeless people, many of them young adult males and families, many employed. Child maltreatment deaths in the United States are the highest in the developed world. The female homicide rate is five times higher than all the developed countries combined. America leads the world in teen pregnancies, divorce, and in suicides (including teen suicides and has seen a spurt in middle age suicide). A significant amount of husband abuse occurs, and there is sibling abuse and even parent abuse by teenage children.' Recent decades have seen an explosive growth of single-parent households, most of them headed by females and living in poverty (a chronic fifteen to twenty percent of America's children live in poverty). America's prenatal births and infant mortality data are the highest in the developed world and its rank has slipped badly since 1960. It ranked twenty-eighth as the best place to be a new mother." Its contraception skills lag behind Europe's, and (consequentially?) its abortion rates are much higher. Personal bankruptcy rates are much higher than Europe's. The Work, Family, and Equity Index (2007) yields more insights into the plight of the American family. Unlike large numbers of developed and developing nations, the United States (as distinct from some of the states) has no mandated paid maternity/paternity leave, no required : paid annual vacation, no required day off per week, no maximum length of the work week, no limit on mandatory overtime, no premium for evening or night work, and no paid leave for sickness (adult or child) or for major family events. America's mothers have no right to breast feed. It lags behind many countries in early child care and education, and its school year is shorter than fifty- four countries. Labor protection laws on the books are not enforced. At least two milhon elder Americans are maltreated by their families and care givers or cheated by relatives, lawyers, or con artists every year. There has been a twelvefold increase in households with unmarried parents since 1970. The increase is largely among working and lower middle class families. Out-of-wedlock births have increased significantly even among white high school Sociai Policy | Winter | 2013 | 23 graduates to become a majority of all births. Not only are children in these households likely to do poorly in school, but such households are now part of an emerging two- tiered family system.'" Eederal investigators report that in 2003 all fifty states failed to meet federal safety standards to protect children and see to it that abused and neglected children find safe and permanent homes, most failing by a wide margin.'" The United States also leads the developed world in crime, the cost of which is enormous (thirteen percent of GDP probably one third more on average than other developed societies). An international corruption perception index saw the United States slip from a poor sixteenth place to a terrible twenty-fourth place.'' It is the only developed nation to put juveniles in prison for life without parole (most ban the practice). It is the only developed country to deny the vote to felons. Incarceration is now so high and such a normal part of American life that its impact on the family and communities deserves a special note. The United States had a low incarceration rate until the 1970s. Coincident with the fiowering of market fundamentalism, the ugly economic conditions of the seventies for all, the ugly ones for the lower classes ever since, and spurred on by Right-liberal ideology (focused on abstract morality and empty universalisms that divert attention from social class as causal reality), the rate of incarceration rose fourfold and the policy of rehabilitation through indeterminate sentencing was abandoned. In consequence, large numbers of poor whites and a disproportionate number of blacks were removed from nonperforming liberal institutions (labor and other markets) it's almost as if imprisonment had been planned to hide America's failure to supply work for all. The large number imprisoned (an average of two milhon with 600,000 being released annually, most to return) has a devastating effect on spouses, children, and communities, including the informal networks that link people to opportunities and which provide important forms of social control. There are also substantial monetary penalties (in relation to expected income) attached to other punishments, further reducing opportunities for escaping the penal system."' Needless to say, the experience of what is essentially a poHcy of unjustifiable retribution harms prisoners, makes it very difficult for them to find work when released (even if qualified), undermines what social supports they have, and deprives them of the vote (all in all, leaves them powerless to behave as we want them to and powerless to resist the world they are forced to live in)."' Is the logic to all this under market fundamentalism the need to establish a hell worse than America's spreading scourge of poverty wages? Americans at all ages and all income levels have the worse health in the developed world.' The reformed American health care system will still be the worst in the developed world. More than half of Americans with serious America no longer has the tallesti people (at all income levels) in the developed v^orld and it is the most overweight (its rising diabetes rate is the world's highest for men and second highest for women). illnesses skip their pills and doctor visits because of cost. American health care now costs far more for at best the same results (eighteen percent of GDP probably one iJiird more on average than other developed societies. The best guess is that the reforms of 2010, leaving it a profit producing sector, will lower costs but only somewhat. The United States ranks forty-second in life expectancy (the gap between the lower and upper classes has also increased over the past four decades). America no longer has the tallest people (at all income levels) in the developed world and it is the most overweight (its rising diabetes rate is the world's highest for men and second highest for women). It leads the entire world in mental illness and mental retardation. Infection rates, deaths and suffering from medical errors, medical fraud, and unnecessary operations are much higher than in Europe. In a comparison of health care for the chronically sick with eight other developed nations, the United States came out last. In a comparison with seven developed countries with universal health care, the United States had more chronically ill people who did without recommended care than the others. America's patients were also less likely to receive coordinated care. Americans are more likely to experience medical errors and a reasonable estimate says that 200,000 Americans die each year because of them.'" The United States has the developed world's highest car accident and death rates and has far more fires than Europe and Japan. One hundred countries have lower limits of alcohol for driving. It lags badly in environmental protection ranking twenty-eighth in one world study. It is the least energy efficient in the developed world and the world's highest subsidizer of energy." Its litigation rates are the world's highest while its vaunted commitment to the rule of law is a myth the majority of the population is imable to exercise its legal rights, many are wrongfully convicted, laws are made by fifty-one semi- democratic legislatures, and presidents openly enforce the law as they see fit. It has the developed world's highest school dropout and illiteracy rates and has lost its edge in higher education (once first in college graduates, it is now twelfth). The United States leads all developed and many undeveloped nations in denying human evolution. It has more food insecurity (hunger) and homelessness and less affordable housing than other developed countries. It lags behind Europe and Japan in Internet access. It lags behind both and China in high-speed rail transit. It received a low grade of C for its overall public and private retirement system on the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index. Ominously, the Miringoff Index of sixteen measures of American life revealed an absolute decline in America's well-being from 1970 to 2005 (undoubtedly continuing thereafter). The American political system is plutocratic and the 24 I Sociai Poiicy | Winter | 2013 least democratic in the developed world. The United States' rising levels of distrust of government and other institutions is higher than other developed nations."" Its de facto property-based polity reflects, reinforces, and increases its already deep economic inequalities. Overall public spending is redistributive but in a widening not an equalizing manner. Twenty-one of twenty- five developed countries impose higher taxes on their corporations than the United States without losing their competitive edge. America's constitution was explicitly structured to thwart the will of the people and to make sure that democracy doesn't emerge there are corporations (and other private groups) with free speech, the gerrymander, proof of citizenship and photo IDs for voters, voter suppression in a dozen forms, "right to work" laws, irrational budget caps and debt ceilings, less time to register and vote, the outsourcing of education and other public services, muzzling labor groups from bargaining, manufactured anti-tax fervor, supermajorities, balanced budget nonsense, and lax, corrupt electoral boards. America's dense network of Right-liberal policy organizations, combined with choice-poor elections, plutocratic political parties, and an anything-goes electoral system (well-short of international standards'"') understandably generate the developed world's lowest rate of political participation (Switzerland not withstanding). It uniquely and irrationally has no national capital budget or annual social welfare report. The United States has the fewest women in elected office, the least foreign aid, and the least state support for the arts in the developed world. America's pathologies and inefficiencies are clearly structural in nature, that is, they stem from American institutions and their supporting norms and values. Instead of seeing the financial and economic debacle of 2007-09 as normal, that is, as the predictable outcome of American norms, values, and institutions, America's elites (both in public life and intellectual life) attributed it to mistakes by government and personal shortcomings. America is far from understanding that its dysfunctional institutions cannot be fixed as long as public discourse is framed in the archaic universalistic ideas of eighteenth-century Anglo- liberalism. Its relative standing will not improve and could get worse if it continues to wallow in the stultifying, self- congratulatory world of exceptionalism. Americans must come to realize that exceptionalist ideology (we are all free, equal, and rational by definition "Adamic citizens" unencumbered by the myths and superstitions of the past) gets more hollow by the day. There is no evidence (as American Right liberals claim) that state programs to minimize market, age, and health risks adversely affect work incentives or productivity. Research has established that societies with cooperative institutions have a more equal distribution of income. The American mindset shows little ability to profit from experience or to incorporate scientific knowledge into its policy making routinely. which in turn, curbs pathologies of all kinds. The United States is poor in cooperative institutions (and in lesser degree so are countries with similar styles of Anglo- capitalism: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK). Northern European countries rank high in cooperative institutions (beyond the continent, Norway and Sweden are especially characterized by cooperative institutions).*^'" A similar classification revolves aroimd type of polity, for example, majoritarian (the United States and others) vs. consensual, and here again the consensual comes out ahead in regard to democratic practice, equality, favorable treatment of women, curbs on corruption, and protecting the environment. "''The Bertelmann Foundation's 2011 report. Social Justice in the OFCD How do the Member States Compare?, ranks the United States far below the developed countries of Northern Europe (and Canada) placing it among the most backward of thirty-one member states on six indexes. As opposed to simply compensating for injustice or projecting formal equality of opportunity, says the report, social justice means "guaranteeing each individual genuinely equal opportunities for self- realization through targeted investment in the development of individual capabilities, and is a prerequisite for the consensus needed for a sustainable social market economy." Harnessing the economy and professions to social functions and routine comparisons of American institutions with best practices elsewhere would do much to demolish American parochialism and complacency. Comparison is the essence of thought. Insularity in pohtics and public policy has its costs alongside all the other negative, wasteful American behavior. A pluralistic power structure is the essence of a problem solving democracy (not constitutions, markets, leadership, better education, nonpartisanship, better thinking, citizens' initiatives, restoring the "vital center," living up to ideals, spending/revenue caps, term limits, "finding the inner citizen", etc.). America's major attempt to deal with its problems, its experiment with "market freedom" over the past four decades, has been a gigantic and unacknowledged failure. The American mindset shows little ability to profit from experience or to incorporate scientific knowledge into its policy making routinely. As with the classic Corporate capitalism of the pre-New Deal era. Corporate World Market capitahsm American-style has led to economic concentration, wealth concentration, damaging and destabilizing income inequality, and high and unnecessary levels of insecurity, deprivation, and poverty. Most importantly, American-style capitalism constitutes a serious undercutting of democracy. The first new nation has been unable to achieve a stable, productive economy or to distribute economic gains fairly. It has never figured out how to provide jobs for all, a serious deficiency in a culture that places a high value on work. The private- Social Policy | Winter | 2013 | 25 profit companies that are used to assemble and distribute capital are inefficient, dishonest, and beyond reform. A history of half measures and neglected reforms was covered up from the 1970s on by the make-believe world of market frindamentahsm: use the state to help only business and reduce help for the general populace. The results were predictably dire. America still exploits labor and nature to realize its obsolete and self- defeating way to economic growth. It may have more knowledge about how an economy works (for example, consumer spending and confidence levels, the multiplier effect, inventory data) and more devices to stabilize the economy (for example, interest rate changes, deposit and unemployment insurance, public works) but these are not only inadequate, but there is serious resistance to using them on the part of obsolete but still powerful sectors of both the Republican and Democratic Parties. The American economy is tightly tied to and dependent on the state, but powerful groups (the Republican Party, much of the Democratic Party, the mainstream economics profession) refuse to acknowledge it, aware no doubt that to do so would undermine the basic premise of their world view. Critical studies by Lefr liberals have emerged, of course, and reforms proposed from across the estabhshment. All routinely lament America's failure to live up to its institutions and ideals with few realizing that it is those very institutions, norms, and values that should be on trial and that America's various problems (pathologies, inefficiencies, booms and busts, recessions, foreign policy disasters) are normal, that is, they stem directly and predictably from America's alleged transhistorical norms, values, and institutions. Lefr and Right-liberal analysts have recommended ways to mend America but all uniformly fail to raise the issue of power and the possibility that the United States has evolved into a two-tiered, two- party oligarchy whose growing self-sustainability will soon make it invulnerable to structural change. Predictably, most reformers recommend government programs to help those left out to join American society (their favorite nostrum is education) without ever asking why so many Americans are routinely lefr out. Ominously, the American political economy is now structured so that the upper fifth remains prosperous while large numbers struggle and significant numbers of working-age Americans, including college graduates, are being left behind. A recent study reported record high levels of profit and record low levels of worker income as a percent of GDP.""America and the American economy remain non-problematic all that is needed is rededication to America's ideals, some government help to the unfortunate, and a few nonstructural reforms to make America work. No one says there is no naturally functioning world for people to join no one to point out that many of America's problems stem from deeply institutionalized mistakes (all ferociously A recent study reported record high levels of profit and record low levels of worker incorne as a percent of GDP/' defended by beneficiaries) not from temporary deviations from basic principles. Without structural reform, the two parties will continue to neglect the wishes of the general public. The cleavage between the few who acquire citizen skills and participate in civic life and the many rendered apathetic and politically innocent will continue. The cleavage between those who utilize the law and the majority who can't will also continue. Education will continue to reproduce the class system and safeguard America's myths. Journalism will continue to rely on the makers of news for news while giving full credence to both political parties and textbook principles. A highly developed entertainment world and its manufactured celebrities will continue to divert the masses from their central concerns using the public's own money (is it fair to say that the booming celebrity world upholds individualist ideology while undermining communal sentiments and ideas?). Popular culture will continue to picture a social order threatened by inexplicable evil and saved by heroic individuals wielding technology. Sports will continue to amplify the myth that social inequality reflects nature's hierarchy of abihty. Gated communities will continue to multiply as the cleavage between stable families and unstable, challenged households fully crystalhzes into a two-tiered household system. Major corporations will continue to adapt their offerings to the new hourglass income structure which reflects the increased inequaHty since 1970 and that their research indicates is here to stay.*"' Severe economic inequality is now structural having been aided in its creation and solidified by new power relations in the polity, law, education, housing, and civic life all under the cover of "market freedom." State-supported American-style capitalism has spread in all directions to take over many public functions, to operate round the clock and on Sundays, to turn many hoUdays into shopping days, to pressure the family to consume and work (robbing it of parenting time), transform education, housing, and other former public services into profit centers as much as possible (at the expense of decent public service wages and pensions), to encroach on or jeopardize public lands, waterways, and parks in the false name of competitive nationalism, to intimidate journalists and public broadcasting in the direction of Right liberalism using both government and a variety of think tanks and foundations, and to commodify and colonize personal life (sale of semen, human eggs, and data on consumption habits and private life, induced celebrity worship, credit checks, etc.). The beliefs and values of American-style capitalism blanket the social world, in effect, muting the voices of reform, worker democracy, and alternate life styles. Ironically, while all this is done in the name of efficiency. 26 I Sooiai Policy ] Winter | 2013 rent-anchored America has become ever more inefficient if the costs of unemployment, underemplojrment, environmental damage, polludon-caused disease, crime (especially white collar and political corruption crime), divorce, unnecessary lidgation, inefficient transportation, excessive armaments, wasteful advertising, socially induced physical and mental illness, overpriced and incompetent health care, and so on are counted against the unmanaged, producer-favored polidcal economy. America's decline in overall relative economic status (say against China, India, and Brazil) was inevitable but its reladve decline against the developed world after 1970 in social pathologies and inefficiencies was not. Only a deliberative democracy can solve problems and provide social direction, but polidcs are bad we are told, and government cannot prevent risks or solve problems, only markets can. Under market fundamentalism, the United States is the only developed society without a commitment to some kind of socioeconomic planning (dramadcally illustrated by the deliberate and damaging absence of a disdncdon between investment and overhead spending in the federal budget). Even the strikingly better records of the more fully developed countries of Northern Europe cannot shake America's complacency. Because America is uninterested in and unskilled in comparative thinking, America's idea of itself is hopelessly at odds with reahty. Its problem solving occurs within the narrow spectrum of Anglo-Liberahsm. Neither Right nor Left-liberal problem solving can work because neither reaches crucial variables. Only a pluralistic power system can generate social system thinking. Instead, Right-liberal observers ritually invoke the American spirit, its flair for innovadon, its entrepreneurial energy, and other Chamber of Commerce nostrums. Left-liberals ask for a variety of relief measures to help an assortment Without a change in power relations, America's march toward democracy will remain stalled indeed, American-style capitalism exhibits a clear pattern away from democracy over the past four decades. of distressed groups, studiously ignoring the question, why do we have so many in distress? The benevolence of billionaires and the charitable acts of individuals are routinely trumpeted. No one asks for the reform of a problem-causing power structure. Unless the issue of social power is addressed, unequal economic power will continue to result in unequal political power resulting in public policies that : maintain or worsen economic inequality, inefficiencies, and pathologies. Without a change in power reladons, America's march toward democracy will remain stalled indeed, American-style capitalism exhibits a clear pattern away from democracy over the past four decades. The powerful condnue to divert attendon from their failures by arguing that we have never really tried free enterprise, by referring to morality, educadon, personal responsibility, competition and threats from abroad, and the need for innovadon, free trade, and economic growth in the abstract. It is time to bypass the metaphysics and hypocrisy of market fundamentalism and recognize that economic shortfalls are neither accidents nor retribution for not following economic principles. It is dme to stop putting fingers in leaky dikes. It is time to acknowledge that the only way to cope with chronic unemployment, stagnant incomes, deficits and debt, extravagant living amidst poverty, and with the developed world's highest levels of pathologies and inefficiencies is to revamp underperforming institudons and to embrace the idea that a rational, democratic society must be explicitly constructed, not willed into being through empty bragging and warmed-over myths. Daniel W Rossides is a frequent cofitributor to Social Policy and Professor of Sociology Fmeritus at Bowdoin College. Be sure to visit our website at Sociai Poiicy I Winter I 2013 127