In our last entry, we floated the concept of looking at our current situation not in terms of a fading American Dream, but rather as the collapse of what can be described as the American Logarithm. To recap, these are the basic facets of the American Logarithm:

• The basic economic unit is the individual.  One person, one job.  Each person should have a well-defined suite of economic skills and economic desires.
• The basic social form is the nuclear family, at the very largest.  Some people can function socially as individuals or in couples, which is fine (although somewhat deficient).  But the optimal, "normal" condition of living is one family, one dwelling.
• The economic backbone of the nation is business-centered, free-market growth.  All economic indicators of health are pegged to expansion: more money, more products, more technology, more jobs, more spending. More is better.
• The role of government is to foster economic growth.  While different camps have alternate methods for accomplishing this (conservative laissez-faire vs. liberal, Keynesian pump-priming), the goal is the same: expansion of the money economy.
• The highest cultural value is freedom.  Individuals should be free to believe, say and do what they like, provided that other people are not directly harmed.  Families should be free to pursue their own dreams of success, without state interference or interdiction.  And businesses should be free to maximize their productivity and profitability, without excessive government taxation and regulation.

Throughout the last several decades, these rules have crystallized, taking shape regardless of which political party is in control.  We have put these values into play, expecting success, national greatness, and progress as the natural outcomes.  

But has it worked?  Not even remotely.  In fact, it has been a staggering failure across the board, in economic, cultural, ecological, and psychological terms.  The American Algorithm has come up empty, and we must loudly proclaim its demise in our public discourse, and explicitly outline a new rule-set for our future.

Since 1960, the American GDP has roughly tripled.  But at the same time, economic inequality has surged to new heights, producing a distribution of wealth and power that looks like the Gilded Age.  The stats are familiar: the top 1% of the population control about a third of the country's wealth, and the top 5% control almost two thirds.  The bottom fifth of the population have zero or negative net worth, and many more households would be in the same situation if homes were not counted as wealth (after all, you need your home to actually live in -- so counting it as a source of wealth is dubious).  

So we have a situation in which the US economy itself has been hugely successful in aggregate.  The last 50 years have been incredibly productive in overall output, with unemployment staying low and worker efficiency increasing by leaps and bounds.  Incredible advances have been made in information technology, medicine, and other spheres.   And huge fortunes have been made in almost every industry imaginable.  But these economic success stories have not translated into benefits for the whole population.  People are working longer hours, commuting longer distances, and paying higher costs for housing, food, and medical care, all while average household income has stayed the same or declined.  It's clear the economic growth itself has nothing to do with making regular people's lives better or easier.  Vast amounts of money can be made in total, with virtually no trickle down to the masses. 

This is a major problem for the American Algorithm, because economic growth is the unquestioned goal of our national politics.  All of our economic indicators and policies equate growth with health.  And if it becomes clear that growth has nothing to do with economic health for regular people, the wheels become very wobbly.  We are locked into seeing economic growth as the only way out of our troubles, even though the last five decades indicate that this hope is unwarranted.  We're so wedded to the growth model that we even pair it with a logical contradiction to tout "sustainable growth" as a nifty new green model for the future.

What traps us in this growth model are the other strands of the American Algorithm.  Since the basic economic unit is the individual, and the basic social form is the nuclear family, there is no larger social space, no broader economic platform from which to challenge the growth model.  People are isolated, powerless to affect real social change, due to the scale at which they are living their lives.  So they turn in anger and frustration to the national political leaders, since they are the macro-architects who can save the day.

But of course, our national leaders cannot save the day, because the problem is structural.  We've already had plenty of growth, trillions of dollars of it.  It just gets funneled upwards to the elite.  Why would more growth not produce more of the same?  Essentially, that is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting the outcome to be different.  We want our leaders to tell us that the next wave of sustainable growth, or smart growth, or green growth, is just around the corner, and will usher in a new day of prosperity for America.  

Can there be a great new era of growth, a vibrant expansion that will lift all boats?  Unfortunately, not in the present configuration.  We may, and likely will, find many new green technologies.  And there will certainly continue to be success stories for the American economy.  But it has become clear that the relentless logic of the American Algorithm has proven a poor delivery vehicle to the populace for any positive changes that might happen in other spheres.

And just to remember, these structural problems are not really anyone's fault.  Globalization, automation, computerization, and other physical and financial technologies have simply allowed the lion's share of economic benefits to go to a smaller number of people.  And in the widest sense, inequality is not a moral problem if regular people at the bottom still have power over their own lives.  But the American Algorithm is a straight jacket, and the people at the bottom do not have any control over their circumstances.  Having the individual and the nuclear family as the basic economic and social units has proven untenable.  There will never be enough money sloshing through the system to change this, especially as the technologies of control are pushing concentration of power in the opposite direction.  

The American Algorithm is finished.  Not only has it collapsed economically, the individual-family-economic growth matrix has virtually nothing of substance to say about ecological meltdown, cultural dessication, and social change.  People are trapped by the rule-set we have put in place, and we just don't have the vocabulary or the social space to creatively confront the future.  As I see it, there is really only one solution, one chink in the armor, one wedge-space into which we can force our prying lever: community.