The problem in America is Capitalism.
The answers some people have, that could/would benefit the population are only for sale.
Does an author really lose a lot of money if a synopsized bullet list of his particular point(s) is published in FR or any other electronic medium?
Patriots will get all huffy because I opened with that statement, but I can't afford books any more and the information gleaned from a book is best digested (by me) in bumper sticker quotes ... my brain just doesn't stick with a book any more.
I'm old ... (er)
Capitalism and the Free Market
are ultimately the problem. With that, wealth in previously undreamt abundance is created and along with that three growing classes of people who do not produce but continue to be supported by that Wealth. There are the Idle Rich, characterized by intellectuals and professors, the class of producers who gain their wealth so quickly that they never develop any idea of how they got that wealth but feel it to be akin to lightning striking and feel they must "give back" by funding all sorts of freedom killing organizations and ideals. And there is the Welfare Class, the bread and Circuses class that the ruling class relies on to keep it in power by voting or, when voting is deemed insufficient, by rioting and crime. There is also a fourth class supported by Capitalism, the political class. All of these leech groups work to co-opt the wealth and production of the Producing class to their own pockets and all of them are inevitable in Capitalist Free Market society.
Without Free Market Capitalism, however, society doesn't prosper in the first place.