We may yet avoid it, but I’m afraid you’re right. Was there any one thing that you think was to blame? Any moment of no return? Any advice you might have for us to stop the seemingly-inevitable downhill slide?
The entitlement culture and the deliberate degradation of education killed us.
We raised a generation where the way to get housed, fed and money for a few beers for people who had no worthwhile skills was to breed like rats. Any pregnant girl got her own, subsidised flat, child benefit payments once the kid was born, and income support to bring her up to a basic standard of living. The more kids she’d have, the more money she’d have.
The kids watched and learned to game the system almost from birth. Most of them knew education was useless, since it didn’t get you a job that would pay more than breeding. Heck, if you search for “Bread” on youtube, you’ll find an entire series about it - and it is a freaking comedy!
At the same time, education became a huge political football and was dumbed down in the name of inclusiveness. I caught the first wave of this - my first year at university was basically a recap of what I had learned (in school) when I was 15 years old! The powers that be do not want educated, well informed citizens, so they made sure that being one was almost impossible without significant effort.
And why try? You have the safety net, right?
That is the hell of it - it was good intentions that destroyed us.
I do hold that any member of society has the duty to help the ones who slip through the gaps (probably still slightly brainwashed there, but it is also a tenet of the Church) but people turned what was meant to be a temporary help into a lifestyle.
Our moment of no return was in (I think) 1997. The Conservative party were in power and were planning a huge overhaul of the benefits system. The unions had been firmly put in their place - and I am not anti union, but the excesses had gone too far until Thatcher trimmed them back. That created a lot of resentment among the left.
The takers looked, saw that they would be uncomfortable, maybe having to get off their backsides and find a job while having no qualifications or skills, and Labour got elected in a landslide. They voted for bread and circuses, and the producers were simply outnumbered.
Sort of where you are now, but it took us much longer to get to the same point. One of the things that I think delayed our fall slightly is a silly one on the surface - we pay to watch TV. If TV watching was free, we’d have fallen completely 2 decades ago.