Popular participation in states like america is on the decline true or false
Answers
false
Explanation:
IStrange as it may seem, a nation once celebrated for its irrepressible optimism now appears to be obsessed by decline. America’s list of complaints seems endless: Real wages are falling. Productivity growth is down. Companies aren’t competitive in global markets. White-collar jobs are no longer secure. The nation’s infrastructure is collapsing. The federal deficit is soaring. The health system is deteriorating. The cities are unsafe. The schools are failing. The gap between rich and poor is widening.
So pervasive is this preoccupation with decline that it has given birth to its own school of thought. Call it “declinism”—the idea that something is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. economy and until it is fixed, America will neither compete effectively in global markets nor provide an adequate standard of living for its citizens.
Why all this concern about decline? One straightforward possibility is that it is an accurate reflection of economic reality. The British, after all, earned a reputation for self-deprecation only after that country’s relative economic decline was well established.
But there is another explanation, more complicated but ultimately more accurate. Declinism may be less the product of actual decline than a response to rapid economic and social change. Change is always disturbing and often perceived negatively, for the simple reason that losers tend to be more vocal than winners. But the changing terms of global competition also represent a particular crisis for the institutions of American society—companies, government, educational institutions, and the like.
The books and reports collected here all shed light on the debate about decline. Some are classic declinist texts that catalogue the supposed weaknesses of the U.S. economy and of American society in general. Others dispute the very idea of U.S. economic decline and present a far more optimistic view of the economy and its prospects. However, none of them fully grasps the real challenges facing U.S. society as it comes to terms with new economic and social realities.
Taken together, these texts suggest that while the popularity of declinist writings says something important about contemporary America, it is not exactly what most declinist authors think. These authors fail to grasp the true significance of the debate about decline.