A way forward

The U.S. reached it's current state of greatness in part due to policies that helped push wealth down to the lower classes. This forced companies to pay their workers more money, which enabled the workers to buy more products, which allowed companies to make more money so they could afford to pay their workers more money, etc.

In a closed system where everyone was following the same rules, this worked pretty well. However, with our global economy, U.S. companies that are paying their workers more money, and thus have to charge more for their product, are competing against companies in other countries that don't have to pay their workers so much, and can thus charge less for their product.

This might still be okay if, as these other countries become wealthier, their workers start demanding higher salaries. We would have a trade imbalance for awhile, but it would level out as the other countries became more wealthy. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be happening. China has cornered the market on manufacturing of several goods, and a lot of wealth has been accumulating in that country, but the wealth has stayed with the government and hasn't trickled down to the people. Therefore, their companies can still afford to sell their goods cheaply.

One way the U.S. might be able to maintain it's high standard of living is by attracting the brightest, hardest working, people from other countries to move here. Our high standard of living is a major attraction to people in poorer countries. This is partially happening already, but by doing it conciously, we may be able to find ways to improve it. Of course, we not only want to select for the brightest minds, but for a variety of other characteristics as well, such as a peace-loving nature, good looks, whatever we think can improve this country. (I'm joking about the good looks, sort of.)

We could improve our chances of out-competing China a lot better if we could, at the same time, rid our selves of all of the low-acheivers in this country, but this will be a lot more difficult to garner support for from the democrats who think everyone should be treated equal. And we need the democrats because without them the republicans would allow all the wealth to accumulate with the rich, and we'd be no better off than the Chinese.