{"id":180172,"date":"2021-11-30T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/?p=2958338"},"modified":"2021-11-30T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T10:00:00","slug":"holiday-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2021\/11\/30\/holiday-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For much of the Western World, December is a season of reunions. In a month full of holidays, workers take time off to assess what\u2019s happened in the year which just ended. \u00a0Young families pack up the car to drive to their Grandparents\u2019 house. Newly minted adults head home from college to see parents and friends from high school. It\u2019s the time of year everyone checks in on how the people in their lives are faring and maybe lend a helping hand or a quick word of advice if they need it.<\/p>\n<p>On behalf of the global community, maybe its time to reach out to our friends in the United States to see if there\u2019s anything they need. It\u2019s pretty clear to those on the outside that things are not ok. Just like that friend from home who used to be a star athlete but is now potbellied, out of work and reliving his glory days well into middle age, it\u2019s startling to see the world\u2019s self-proclaimed defender of democracy in such rough shape.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time, the US has been added to an annual list of \u201cbacksliding\u201d democracies by a respected European think tank. It\u2019s a shocking indictment of a country that continually flaunts its prowess at the process of democratic governance and denounces any other form of government as implicitly immoral or \u201cless than ideal.\u201d According to Sweden\u2019s International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance\u2019s, the US\u2019 \u201cvisible deterioration\u201d began in 2019, but most people would admit to saying they\u2019ve noticed the decline for years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As of 2021, in more than 25 States, the Republican Party led legislatures have manipulated new congressional maps to give their party a majority of seats with a minority of the vote;<\/li>\n<li>According to the US Census Bureau, the lowest 40% of earners in the U.S. were worse off in 2019 than 18th century French peasants, with a Gini Coefficient (a statistical measure of a country\u2019s income inequality) approaching that of the 1789 Revolution;<\/li>\n<li>In 2021, for the first time in its history \u2013 an outgoing President refused to engage in the peaceful transition of power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If the US was your athlete friend from high school \u2013 you\u2019d say he needs to hit the gym and work on himself. The least responsible thing you could do is tell him he looks great and that he should put on a swimsuit and strut around.\u00a0 But that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n<p>On December 9<sup>th<\/sup> and 10<sup>th<\/sup> the US will host the global \u201cSummit for Democracy.\u201d Ever ready with implicit martial metaphors, the Summit\u2019s key themes will be defending against authoritarianism and fighting corruption. Rather than lead by example and get its own house in order, the US, whose ability to self-govern continues to weaken and whose people are experiencing a generational drop in standard of living and life expectancy, thinks the best course of action is to double down on coaching the world how to behave.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the same as that former athlete lecturing you on what exercises to do to get in shape, even though the last time he hit the gym was twenty years ago. By nearly every metric (education, healthcare, crime \u2013 take your pick) the administrative model of the United States is not keeping pace with the times. We haven\u2019t even mentioned the country\u2019s utterly inadequate response to Covid-19.\u00a0 Rather than look around for new ideas to address its problems, the US is retreating further and further into the habits it already knows.\u00a0 There may irreconcilable differences between how the United States conducts itself and how countries of wildly different backgrounds, such as China, operate their societies. \u00a0What cannot be argued, however, is that China has made great strides over the past forty years, lifting more people out of poverty that ever before in history. Instead of planning a \u201cSummit for Democracy\u201d and inviting representatives from Taipei (a move calculated to irritate Beijing), imagine if the US decided to host \u201cSummit for the Global Future\u201d and invited anyone that had good ideas on how to move the world forward. \u00a0That is how a confident and healthy nation would behave. Rather than further dividing the world into competing systems of government, it would tell the world that all ideas are on the table as long as it brings progress. That would require the US to work on itself first and, sadly, it doesn\u2019t seem to want to put in the effort.<\/p>\n<p>This holiday season, the world should tell the US to get back in the gym.<\/p>\n<p>Phil Hart<\/p>\n<p>Vendor Media Asia<\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\">Tags: <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/tag\/asia\/\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Asia<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/tag\/democracy\/\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Democracy<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/tag\/summit\/\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Summit<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/tag\/vendor-media\/\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vendor media<\/a> <\/p>\n<div><strong>See Campaign: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdneswire.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/icrowdneswire.com<\/a><br \/><b>Contact Information:<\/b><br \/>Name: Phil Hart Email: Phil_Hart_VendorMedia@protonmail.com Job Title: Director<\/p>\n<p><b>Tags:<\/b><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/financial-content\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Financial Content<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/menafn\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Menafn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/ips\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">IPS<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/reportedtimes\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reportedtimes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/google-news\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Google News<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/releaselive\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ReleaseLive<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/pr-wirein\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">PR-Wirein<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/news-category\/extended-distribution\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Extended Distribution<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/language\/english\/\" rel=\"category tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">English<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h3>Contact Information:<\/h3>\n<p>Name: Phil Hart<br \/> Email: Phil_Hart_VendorMedia@protonmail.com<br \/> Job Title: Director<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For much of the Western World, December is a season of reunions. In a month full of holidays, workers take time off to assess what&rsquo;s happened in the year which just ended. &nbsp;Young families pack up the car to drive to their Grandparents&rsquo; house. Newly minted adults head home from college to see parents and [&hellip;] <a href=\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2021\/11\/30\/holiday-advice\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Holiday Advice - Business<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2021\/11\/30\/holiday-advice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Holiday Advice - Business\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For much of the Western World, December is a season of reunions. 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