I wanted to share a resource with you that we recently developed at the Democracy Collaborative that we think partially illuminates why the United States is where it is as a country right now. Our Index of Systemic Trends (https://index.democracycollaborative.org/) is an effort to quantify, track, and visualize the multifaceted political, economic, social, and ecological crisis afflicting the U.S. In it, you’ll find dozens of charts showing long term trends in everything from macroeconomic stability and wealth inequality to life expectancy and trust in the institutions of our society. It also examines the increasing financialization of the U.S. economy as a key driver of many of our economic outcomes, especially inequality.
The Index (https://index.democracycollaborative.org/) is designed to be illustrative of an important material fact: that our current political-economic system is consistently failing to deliver improvement and/or competitive results compared to other advanced economies across a variety of different measures; and that this is indicative of a systemic crisis – and of the need to move in the direction of a new system that can and will produce better outcomes.
We hope that the Index and/or some of the trends it highlights can be useful to you in your work as we move forward together. We also welcome your feedback on the Index and its presentation. We are currently hard at work on a UK version of the Index and your thoughts on the US Index can help us to deliver the best possible version of the UK Index.