What is the US?

What should the federal government’s role in the life of the country be?

What is the US’s role in the world?

We need to figure this out over the next 10 years:

There are lots of issues, but Crunchicrant argues that these, above, are foundational:

• What should the social safety net look like? Current arrangements are unsustainable, and there is no serious discussion about how we move forward.
• Are we doing what is right and reasonable to give all our citizens the opportunity to lead fulfilling lives? There is widening social unrest and we may not have got this right: two topics are raised where we may be able to find consensus and improve opportunity in the US.
• Are we taking care of our environment? This is important, and we are not.
• Are the key markets which make up our economy working properly? The healthcare market, in particular, is not and is dragging us down.
• Do we have a strategy to keep ourselves safe in the world – and have we configured resources to deliver on that strategy? Our foreign policy is adrift, and there is work to do to configure our security resources optimally.
• Are the public finances sustainable (over the long term?). A prosperous, sustainable future requires sustainable public finances.

Figure all this out, deliver solutions, and the federal government can be satisfied that the foundations of the the country are soundly in place: that the country is calibrating its old age pension and medical promise to changes in longevity and medical science, is providing opportunity sufficiently to its people (without being a welfare state – a balance to be based on the Democratic will of the people), is doing everything it reasonably can to secure the climate future of the planet, that key markets (especially healthcare) are working properly (and are not robbing the people), is secure from external (and internal) threats to peace and prosperity, and that it can and will meet its old age and safety net promise to the people without undermining the public finances and soundness of the dollar.

On top of that sound foundation, civil society can (assuming it chooses to do so) also build other important benefits (out of Crunchicrant’s scope):

• Optimized access to healthcare
• Equal treatment and justice for races, sexes, orientation etc.
• Calibration of the criminal justice and corrections system
• Better democratic processes

We are not there (with the foundational issues) – not even close: many of the issues are not even being discussed.

Not helping is a snarling political discourse which has descended to the point where (now) President Biden (speech – October 6, 2020) has recalled President Lincoln’s words that we are a house divided.

Crunchicrant does not understand this: the big issues that we face can and should be examined dispassionately and rational solutions developed to address them: this is what needs to happen. There will need to be calls around whether government should be more, or less, involved; but we live in a democracy, and so long as the issues are explored/explained and the solutions debated, those decisions – and they are mainly nuanced decisions – are made through the democratic process: as citizens in a democracy, we abide by these rules and the decisions they produce, all the time seeking to improve the quality of problem analysis and the workings of the apparatus of democracy.

There’s no reason for snarling.

This website tries to ignite the debate and the formation of a consensus which we seem to be reluctant to get into and which our politicians seem to be avoiding (it must be thought to be bad for re-election chances – but to Crunchicrant that is regrettable and soggy (ABOUT), a dereliction of the most important thing our leaders should be doing).

According to polling, 2 out of 3 of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction (a rare, clear, consensus in the US). But what direction are we headed in, and what direction should we be headed in? Except on the issue of the environment Crunchicrant tries not to suggest a direction: instead it seeks to illuminate opposing visions of what the US is, what the role of federal government should be in this country, and what our role in the world should be: it does so by exploring the issues that confront us and the choices and trade-offs that are increasingly urgent.

It is a complex of inter-related issues, each with significant decisions around prioritization and allocation of our limited resources.

Balancing priorities in the US