Time is Running Out; letter to NYT

Time is running out for America to reverse its trend to second-power status, but the lack of a “coherent vision or plan” to build a new, saner, more sustainable economy has actually been a deliberate choice. For decades we have watched — and derided with horror as socialism — more export-oriented economies, powered by cleaner fuels, and equipped to deliver a better-educated work force. Our response has not been to learn from them whatever might be useful to America, but to declare., “We’ll never be like Europe!”
Meanwhile, the coherent vision or plan that brought America unity and prosperity for 200 years in response to the human needs created by the developing human mind empowered the same special interests that eventually dragged it down, by exploiting for their own benefit the economic system they knew so well because they made it. Now those needs divided between Main Street and Wall Street have reached a paralyzing state of conflict in America over the proper size and role of the state.
That is actually about the same way the unique civilization of the West matured as each stage responded in its turn with a new and distinctive structure of the state -- the priests in Egypt, the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. Now that the corporate oligarchs of America are next, their conservative supporters are desperately trying to stop the flood by blocking any move away from the status quo.
But there is no denying the need for mature "self-actualization" in a society freed by the miracles of technology to concentrate on quality of life, based not only on the physical infrastructure that was built in the previous age to support wealth creation but also on a social infrastructure of health care, child care, leisure time, and comfortable retirement.
(CHNGE)
Tn our digitalized information age, that is a society unachievable by a people seeking a better life by by working hard to acquire wealth and possessions make that work requires government funding for social infrastructure and other strong support for competitive business, like higher education and advanced innovation. The resulting higher profits support higher progressive tax rates on the self-multiplying productivity of advanced technology that our social development has made available by our hard-working and innovative past.