Whenever I complain about the way things are going here in the good ole US of A, I inevitably get one of two responses: 1. If it is so bad here why do people want to come here from all over the world, and 2. Where is it any better? (I also get accused of being un-patriotic, but I will deal with that later.)
I suppose this type of response is justified to one degree or another. We are still better than most places in the world. My problem isn’t where we are right now, but where we are going. I am troubled by the direction we are going.
I live in Texas, and started my business in 1992. I laugh when people in Texas brag about how much better we are than California, Illinois, New York, etc. We are also better than North Korea. What does that prove? I compare Texas to how it is now, how it was in 1992, and how I suspect it is going to be in 10 years; I am not comforted. Texas was a much better place to do business in 1992 than it is now. And in regards to the future, Texas is always about 10 years behind California. Look at California today, and see what Texas will be like in 10 years. Not comforting.
As to why people want to come here from other countries, it is obvious. They are coming from failed socialist states that promise them everything and give them nothing. They think that the US will give them everything that they were promised by their failed socialist states. And so far we have been fairly successful at providing for their wants at high cost to the taxpayers. An uneducated illegal immigrant with no marketable skills can come to the USA and work for $12,000 a year compared to $1,200 or less in their homeland. This is a huge benefit to employers here in the USA who don’t want to pay higher wages. In return for them “doing the work that Americans are too lazy to do” we provide them with $20,000 or more in government welfare paid for by taxpayers. Maybe it would have been cheaper for us all to just have employers pay US workers a little more to do the same job???? How long will we be able to continue with this economically irrational and suicidal course? Who knows.
As for the other issue: Where could you possibly go that would be better than the USA? That is a loaded and chauvinistic question. There are a lot of nice places in the world where people can live free, and given the trajectory of freedom in the USA perhaps live more freely in the future. Maybe you won’t be as rich. Maybe you won’t have as nice a car, or as big a house. Maybe you wont live in a country that has a powerful military. Those things don’t mean so much to me.
As for being patriotic if being enslaved to wealth and power equates to being a patriot, well I guess you can count me out.
It isn’t, but going down with with a sinking ship isn’t patriotism either, it is stupidity, or to give a example from history, if Aeneas had stayed in Troy to get slaughtered by the Greeks, there would be no Rome.