I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since our American culture is now almost totally geared around consumer spending. We simply can’t keep the paradigm going if we spend less this year than we did last.
It seems that houses today MUST have master suites with at least 150 square foot closets and 200 square foot bathrooms. The general rule is that the family now needs 1,000 square foot of house for every member. Two kids = 4,000 SF minimum.
But a point of this post is one of the items that kind of sneaked up on me was that apparently, at least to the semi-affluent folks, it is unacceptable for kids to share a bedroom with their siblings! I don’t know when this happened but it crops up on more and more on the house flipper and fixup shows and such that my wife is addicted to. They say every child needs his own room so that he/she can grow their own personality. Now, I know I am going back to the “good old days” when I say I didn’t have a bedroom of my own until I graduated from college. How did I manage to become a real person apart from my siblings and roommates? In other words, I think this new trend reeks of alternate truth. Or maybe it is just another way to continue to consume more and more.
Now finally getting to the main point of this post and that is how China looks at things differently than we do, or at least as the Trump administration does. I would highly recommend a BBC-America TV series entitled “Tales from Modern China”. That series is an eye-opener for how China is doing almost everything right in order to become the next world leader. Their infrastructure improvements dwarfs our and a high percentage of it is in solar/wind/water renewable resources. Of course we know that at least the leadership of our country has decided that this approach is dead wrong.
To see all the giant advances that China has made in the last decade alone makes it pretty obvious they will welcome their new role as world leader and put the US into a follower mode as we did for England. I wonder if all those Evangelicals who put Trump in office will ever realize the mistake they made. But more importantly, I wonder if all those who stayed home on election day and allowed 25% of the voting age population to choose a president will realize the mistake they made.
Is is too late to reverse this change in world leadership? Maybe… maybe not…
RJ's Corner 
It’s way too late. The one word that came to my mind is respect. In our country there is little respect for each other ( look at any comment section on Facebook or other social media). We don’t respect our country and the freedoms it use to stand for. We certainly don’t respect our environment (hence the anti climate change group and the greed of big oil to keep the very things China is doing with renewable energy from not happening here except in small amounts). We don’t respect science and all the insights into our universe and earths geological history (thanks to the fundamentalists who also don’t respect different lifestyle choices). We dont respect decent low cost health care for ALL (hello Republicans). And we are a country who could elect someone like Trump. That says it all. Oh and did I mention the NRA and their followers who have no respect for the lives lost through excessive gun use and very loose laws. Scalise voted AGAINST a bill to keep guns a
away from the mentally ill. Why I ask you, if not for quid pro quo.
I realize China is by no means a perfect country and has some harsh ways, but they see the future and are looking forward instead of being stuck in place with endless bickering and lobbying and back door politics. We are in quicksand and can’t get out.
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Hi Mary. I think the big problem right now it the political gridlock which has caused us to fail to more forward with so many needed items in the 21st century. The world has proven that a single payer system is the most efficient and equitable for healthcare needs but we are to mired down in avoiding it. Our infrastructure used to be the envy of the world now it is falling apart due to not wanting to pay for maintaining it let alone improving it.
I think maybe it is time to let someone else lead us into the future, even if they do have a different political system than ours. When 25% of our population can get someone elected it shows our democracy is not living up to its ideals. I have not given up as you seem to have but something has to change to allow a different paradigm to take effect in the USA. When we elect a totally incompetent to the Oval office and expect him to “fix” things that shows our increasing ignorance of world order.
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