How The West Was ..... Lost

It’s clear that the mature western nations are in deep trouble!

It’s clear that the mature western nations are in deep trouble both economically and culturally and will eventually be a shadow of their former selves internationally.

From their citizens perspective the western nations are losing ground with degradation of living standards and growing discomfort with their national security, social values and harmony.

Many western citizens are in despair with the ineptitude of the political leadership and the democratic political systems that are trending toward dysfunctionality, with even the obvious and highly necessary policies being badly planned and executed. There are far too many distractions due to minority interests and political diversions. Many believe the political agendas being followed are far from serving the majority of the citizens needs or wishes.

Although the media tends to continue to confuse the issues, they do eventually define the problems, but few solutions get undertaken.

So, its clear to most of the citizen population that things are not going well, and the main issues not being satisfactorily addressed are as follows….

Lack of national spirit…. This has been under-supported with the dangerous promotion of the notion by some politicos of the nations becoming “post nation states” and further division has been created by “identity politics” All this has been amplified by teaching our children “anti-nationalism” and anti-colonialism thinking.

Our youth are being indoctrinated with the confused ideology of woke and DEI that has pushed group identity which has been a damper on the past western concepts of equality and meritocracy that was the bedrock of our past cultural success in the western world.

A reset on all this to return to our past social values is badly needed.

Foolish Climate change and environmental policies…. Some corrective action is underway in some western nations to reverse some past foolish climate change alarmist policies, but the whole western world needs to better understand that NetZero is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.

De-industrialization via poor global trade management…. In less than one lifetime we have experienced the destruction of the industrial sectors in our western societies. and the significant loss of national prosperity,

The globalized manufacturing approach with efficient supply chains supported by liberalized free trade agreements has been the business norm in the last four decades and has been the prime reason for the “hollowing out” of our Western industrial base.

But now many experts predict global and national economic conditions that will, for many reasons, provide an opportunity for our western economies to generate the correct political will to redevelop into more localized trade blocs, and reshore their industrial base…. But where is the political will?

Under investment in national infrastructure and productivity….. Poor national investment strategies have focused on useless climate change mitigation and have allowed the real estate market to become bloated and over valued. New policies need to encourage future investments in value adding commercial and industrial projects that will improve the productivity and prosperity of the national economy by leveraging our skills and resources.

Ongoing growth and yet declining performance of the public sectors…. The deindustrialization effect and the associated trade imbalance has reduced the value adding jobs in the economy. It has moved vast amounts of the population into both service and government paid jobs that has reduced the overall productivity and wealth within the western nations. The challenge will be how to get this reversed.

Under managed Immigration…. This has allowed significant amounts of low skilled labor into the economies and has stressed the national infrastructures of housing, heath services and education with a net disadvantage to both productivity and living standards for the existing citizens.

It has also upset the delicate balance of national identity and overextended the ability for cultural assimilation and integration to take place. It’s fair to say that the grand experiment of multiculturalism has failed badly.

Excessive low-cost labor has also allowed the business sectors to under-invest in labor cost avoidance that has further reduced the productivity and competitive level of the national business environment.

A reset is badly needed and will require a strong nationalistic approach by governments.

Poor learning systems not geared to the economy… we are fast developing a workforce that is over-educated and under-trained with inadequate “on the job” experience to support a modern and productive national economy.

Our whole educational system from the entry level to further education needs a total shake-down to return to the goal of providing the correct value adding education and training for our future workforce, and not wasting effort on indoctrinating them with over socialist ideology fast being recognised as alien to our success as a modern productive society.

The Fix……

The only real solution is to install a far more proactive political leadership that is clearly in very short supply in most western nations.

Trump has mostly the correct policies to improve the US economy, but his execution so far has been extremely poor.

The Canadian, Australian, UK and certainly the EU politics remain highly confused as to how to install the correct leadership and the policies needed for those nations to flourish. And… it’s clear that they have not even come to terms with the list of issues mentioned above… let alone the correct fixes.

More in my book at www.nigelsouthway.org