A sinking feeling about the economy

But relatively few commentators question the wisdom of letting your economy’s growth rely so much on consumer spending, when wages for most people aren’t rising and financial speculation, often a churning game of skimming profits off of the top of big buckets of money, is rampant. How do citizens in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries afford such high gas prices? How are their economies structured differently?

Each day I hope to stumble upon a reassuring and realistic plan, supported by a broad consensus among business and political leaders, to create an economy in which hardworking people can find good jobs that will allow them to buy houses and send their children to college. Many business and political leaders are avoiding this topic. Very possibly they do so because they do not want to admit the bleak limitations of their power or the shocking lack of intense strategic thinking about how to fix these structural problems.

Is this blighted economy really what American citizens will settle for over the next few decades?

Where ends our current path of maximizing profits for CEOs, hedge funds and wealthy investors by breaking the back of the middle class and stomping on the poor? No place that we will enjoy, I am certain. We really should construct a different path.

Nick Capo, an associate professor of English at Illinois College, writes as a public scholar and private citizen.