The USA and its future

A friend of mine, for whom I have great admiration because of his years as a missionary, for investing his life into putting in practice the great commission where Jesus commanded us to: “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." He has done exactly that.
I am deeply saddened that he has moved, but through the wonders of the internet still have him close to me.
In his blog he makes reference to something that, as a foreigner, I always wondered how people in this United States never objected to, and that is the outrageous income of CEOs. As somebody who believes in real competition when companies are profitable I accept well paying jobs for everybody, shareholders, employees, management. But I find amazing that the shareholders don’t question the performance of CEOs who have run the companies to the ground. They still pay them grotesque payoffs even though they didn’t deserve them.
There are a couple of things, and I know that it sounds repetitive, but as a foreigner I probably notice that other people overlook, one is the fact the US is heading rapidly to, what I call, the 14th of July of 1789. To most Americans that means nothing. But to those of us who still remember history from high school, that was Bastille Day, or the French Revolution. What significance does that have, for starters it is the public revolting against the authorities, what Leona Helmsley would call the “little people” revolting against their repressors. And why is this of significance? Because many times during history powerful people would exploit, curtail people’s civil liberties. In my view this sounds similar to what corporations (powerful people hiding behind large entities) are doing. The gap between the haves and have nots is becoming unsustainable. In order for Capitalism to survive, consumption of goods to exist, we need a big middle class to consume those goods. When jobs are exported for the benefit of the few, those people who had good paying jobs no longer have them, and their capacity to consume has been drastically reduce.
The second thing is when I think of what brought the Roman Empire, to a certain extent, to its demise: a Senate out of touch with the needs of the population, an uneducated population, corruption, degradation, the overextension of the empire. This sounds awfully familiar with what the US is going through right now. The lack of education allows thing to happen such as people being mislead into conflicts with other countries, with false information, having their civil liberties totally violated on false reasons, being told that if the government provides a public option in healthcares it will mean death camps for the elderly. If people would have tools, such as reliable means of information, that put news and public at the core of their business, and not the bottom line and the interest of the few at the expense of the public, figures like Walter Cronkite who were trusted by the audience. The public is scared and justifiably so, because they don’t know where to turn to in order to make an educated decision of what is wrong and write.
All this is troubling because when times are good there is usually nothing to worry about, but when times are rough people panic.
For somebody like myself who feels that has passed the midterm line of his life I always wonder what lays in the future for my kids. And based on what I have said already above everything in my mind tells me that “interesting” days lay ahead.