1장
America Adrift: How Shareholder Capitalism Eroded Our National Foundation
In the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, Scott Galloway's "Adrift" has emerged as a cultural touchstone for those seeking to understand America's precarious position. Endorsed by thought leaders from Malcolm Gladwell to Andrew Yang, this data-driven examination of America's economic and social trajectory has become required reading in boardrooms and policy circles alike. The book's stark charts and unflinching analysis have sparked intense debate about the future of capitalism, with The New York Times calling it "a wake-up call that's impossible to ignore." What makes Galloway's perspective so compelling is his unique position as both beneficiary and critic of the system he describes-a successful entrepreneur and NYU professor who acknowledges how his own success story was made possible by the very institutions now under threat. As America grapples with unprecedented inequality and social fragmentation, Galloway's analysis provides a roadmap for how we arrived here and what might come next.
2장
The Great Divergence: How Shareholder Primacy Reshaped America
The America we know today began taking shape in the 1980s as the postwar boom faded and a new economic philosophy emerged. Shareholder capitalism-the idea that a corporation's sole purpose is maximizing stock price-became our new religion, with Wall Street as its church and stock tickers as its liturgy. Milton Friedman, the high priest of this movement, declared that executives who considered anything beyond share price were "stealing" from shareholders and "preaching socialism."
This shift was embodied in Reagan's economic policies, which slashed the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% while tripling the national debt to $2.7 trillion. The premise was that wealth would "trickle down" as the rich reinvested their tax savings, creating prosperity for all. The results were mixed at best, but the philosophy fundamentally altered America's view of government. We lost sight of government's core purposes-protecting minority rights, investing in education and infrastructure, providing safety nets-and began seeing it as an obstacle rather than an enabler of prosperity.
The consequences were immediate and lasting. Infrastructure investment plummeted from 2.5% of potential GDP in 1966 to just 1.3% by 1983. Today, one in five U.S. roads remains in poor condition, 45% of Americans lack public transit access, and water mains break every two minutes. These aren't just inconveniences-they're tragedies waiting to happen, as we saw in Flint's lead-poisoned water and Miami's deadly condominium collapse.
Mental healthcare faced similar cuts through "deinstitutionalization," which left hundreds of thousands with serious mental illness to fend for themselves. Kennedy's 1963 vision for a federal mental health treatment system never received reliable funding, and Reagan gutted Carter's attempts to revive it. The result? Over half a million Americans experience homelessness nightly, with 20% suffering severe mental illness.
Meanwhile, union power collapsed. In 1950, nearly one-third of American workers belonged to unions, staging 424 major strikes that year. By 1988, strikes had plummeted to just 40, despite unfair labor practice charges remaining high. This wasn't because working conditions had improved-rather, a complex set of factors, including some union overreach and corporate resistance, led to a massive power shift from labor to capital.
Perhaps most significantly, the relationship between productivity and compensation fundamentally broke. From 1950 to the mid-1970s, worker pay rose in lockstep with productivity gains. Since then, these measures have dramatically diverged. Between 1973 and 2014, productivity grew 72% while hourly worker compensation rose just 9%. America kept becoming more productive, but workers received less than half the benefits-the rest went elsewhere, primarily to shareholders and executives.
This transformation has created an economy where the wealthiest 1% have seen wages increase by almost 140% since 1979, while the bottom 99% experienced growth nearly eight times slower. The financial sector's influence grew dramatically-the percentage of bankers in the top 1% nearly doubled from 8% in 1979 to 14% by 2005. This stark disparity made building wealth increasingly difficult for most Americans, severely limiting the upward mobility that previous generations enjoyed.
3장
Global Progress Amid American Decline: The Paradox of Our Time
Despite the costs of unbridled capitalism, the past four decades have generated unprecedented global prosperity. Extreme poverty has dropped from over 40% of humanity in 1980 to less than 10% today. Those living without democratic rights fell from 44% to under 25%. Life expectancy increased by a decade, and illiteracy was cut in half. America drove these gains through innovation and consumer culture, with billions lifted from poverty primarily by manufacturing goods for U.S. and European markets.
The productivity revolution has been staggering-from 1980 to 2004, world output doubled from $35 trillion to $70 trillion, generating as much economic potency in a single generation as humans had accumulated throughout all previous history. Today, we produce as much in one month as the entire world did in 1950.
China's transformation exemplifies this progress, reducing those below the international poverty line from 750 million in 1990 to fewer than 10 million today. By 2019, China had 100 million households with wealth exceeding $110,000. Despite the modern world order's flaws, this achievement's scale is historically unprecedented.
Health improvements have been equally remarkable. Infant mortality has fallen by two-thirds since 1990, while deaths from disease and war have decreased-the ultimate measure of human prosperity: more life. Democracy expanded significantly after the Cold War's end as autocratic regimes lost economic and political support.
Global connectivity has transformed commerce and opportunity. The shipping container revolutionized trade after Keith Tantlinger's mid-1950s innovation enabled efficient standardization across shipping lines and nations. Container-shipped goods increased from 102 million metric tons in 1980 to 1.83 billion metric tons by 2017. Today, approximately 80% of all goods travel by sea.
The digital revolution accelerated these changes. Internet access has increased 206% since 2005, transforming how we shop, date, learn, work, and entertain ourselves. Every minute in 2020, nearly $240,000 in transactions were made on Venmo, 41.6 million messages sent on WhatsApp, over 400,000 hours of video streamed on Netflix, 2,700 people installed TikTok, and 6,600 packages shipped by Amazon.
Two "laws" explain these extraordinary changes: Moore's Law observes that transistors on a chip double every eighteen months, while Metcalfe's Law states that a network's value equals the number of connections between users. These laws quantify our online experience: both device power and network value have grown millionfold since the internet's dawn.
America's institutions have played a crucial role in this progress. Nearly half of all Nobel science and economics prizes have gone to luminaries associated with American institutions. Even more telling, more than a third of U.S.-affiliated Nobel laureates in the past decade have been immigrants.
The postwar U.S. didn't just invest domestically but made multibillion-dollar investments in allies and former enemies alike, including the $13.3 billion Marshall Plan. This tradition continues with America remaining the world's largest provider of foreign aid. Since 1980, the U.S. has extended roughly $1 trillion in nonmilitary aid on a largely bipartisan basis. Presidents from Reagan to Trump have supported major humanitarian initiatives, from African famine relief to HIV/AIDS programs.
Yet despite these global advances, America's own middle class has hollowed out, creating a paradoxical situation where our innovation drives global prosperity while domestic inequality reaches unprecedented levels.
4장
The Cult of the Innovator: How We Replaced Community with Celebrity
The Reagan Revolution celebrated individualism, transferring credit for economic prosperity from the laboring masses to brilliant or lucky individuals directing them. As church attendance decreased, the innovator became our modern-day savior. America has always celebrated cowboys, inventors and industrialists, but this idolatry runs deepest in tech culture, where success is seen as individual achievement marking grit and genius.
Silicon Valley conveniently forgets its foundation was built on government projects-the computer chip, internet, mouse, web browser, and GPS were all midwifed with tax dollars. While private conversion of these technologies took vision, it also required millions of hours from thousands of workers educated in public schools. We once idolized astronauts and civil rights leaders who inspired hope; now we worship tech innovators generating billions.
This shift coincided with Americans turning away from community engagement. In the 1990s, most attended religious services and many joined clubs like Rotary or enrolled children in scouting programs. Over thirty years, this has dramatically changed-fewer than half now attend religious services, and membership in community organizations steadily dwindles. While some engagement has moved online, Facebook cannot substitute for face-to-face conversations or working alongside others to improve communities.
As we've withdrawn from civic life, public infrastructure has deteriorated. In 2019, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler boasted that 92% of all U.S. drinking water met safety standards. The flip side is that 8% of America's water isn't safe to drink, potentially putting 26 million people at risk. For perspective, 97% of American adults have cell phones. Tech companies have managed to put supercomputers in our pockets, yet the U.S. government cannot ensure safe drinking water for our entire population.
Research and development patterns reflect this privatization trend. Federal R&D funding as a share of GDP has declined steadily from a peak of 1.9% to 0.7% in 2019. Private investment has filled the gap, but this approach is shortsighted. Private investments face short-term market pressures incompatible with long-term, uncharted inquiry. Moreover, private investment means private ownership, limiting exploitation of research and removing democratic controls. Today's R&D labs push boundaries in artificial intelligence, genetic manipulation, and viral replication-do we want these technologies controlled by elected officials or exclusively by tech billionaires?
The cult of the founder has reached absurd proportions in tech IPO filings. While Apple's 1980 S-1 mentioned "Steve Jobs" just 8 times and Microsoft's 1986 filing referenced "Bill Gates" 23 times, modern founders dominate their companies' narratives. WeWork's Adam Neumann appeared 169 times in its failed IPO filing, mostly describing self-dealing transactions.
Tech companies are also abandoning the traditional transition from "benevolent dictatorship" to shareholder republic when going public. Instead, insiders secure unprecedented control through dual-class share structures, where certain shares (reserved for founders and VCs) have greater voting power. This insulates founders from outside shareholder pressure, with 46% of tech companies now using such structures when going public.
The result is a system where it's never been easier to become a billionaire, yet never harder to become a millionaire. While U.S. households own about half of the $50 trillion stock market, 89% of those shares belong to the wealthiest 10%-up from 82% in 1990. This wealth entrenchment stems from policies favoring the already wealthy: capital gains are taxed lower than income from work, and homeowners can deduct mortgage interest while renters get nothing.
Morning shows spent nearly as much time covering Bezos's brief space flight in July 2021 as they did discussing climate change throughout all of 2020. This media distortion highlights our misplaced priorities: we're fixated on a billionaire's three-minute joyride while ignoring the 279 billion tons of Antarctic ice melting annually.
5장
The Hunger Games Economy: How Prosperity Became a Zero-Sum Competition
Forty years of economic growth has created vast wealth while determining its allocation. By making shareholder returns the sole success metric, shareholders have become the primary beneficiaries. We've glorified individual leaders who now capture the greatest share of their organizations' production. Eight of the world's ten wealthiest people are current or former American tech CEOs, with Elon Musk leading.
Corporate profits and employee compensation used to rise and fall together, but since the dot-com boom, they've diverged dramatically. Since 1960, corporate profits have grown 85-fold compared to employee compensation's 38-fold increase. We're effectively protecting existing shareholders while diminishing opportunities for future innovators. Airlines exemplify this problem-since 2000, the six largest airlines spent 96% of their free cash flow on share buybacks, then received $50 billion in taxpayer bailouts when COVID hit.
The gap between CEO and worker compensation has exploded from 21:1 in 1965 to 351:1 in 2020-a staggering 1,670% increase. Defenders claim stock-heavy compensation ties high pay to performance, but why should bull markets benefit only executives while workers see minimal gains?
Wealth distribution in America has gone from merely lopsided in 1990 to truly dystopian by 2021. The poorest 50% of Americans now control just 2% of the nation's wealth, while the richest 1% possess nearly a third. Globally, the top 1% of adults account for 44% of global net worth. America's secret sauce used to be balancing free market policies with anticompetition regulations, but as regulation became demonized and tech CEOs became cultural icons, we've abandoned this balance-devastating our middle class.
Value has become so concentrated in tech that six companies-Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet, and Microsoft-now account for over 20% of the S&P 500. Digital advertising is dominated by Google and Facebook, who take 2 of every 3 dollars, while Amazon captures 1 of every 3 e-commerce dollars.
Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has effectively been cut over time-from $8.51 in 2021 dollars (1950's $0.75) to today's $7.25, despite massive productivity gains. Had minimum wage kept pace with worker productivity, it would be $22.18 per hour today. In nearly all areas of the country, a single adult working full-time needs more than $15 hourly to cover basic living expenses.
Between 1993 and 2020, education costs skyrocketed while food, housing, and medical care costs rose substantially-all while real incomes stagnated. Consumer electronics may be better and cheaper, but these advances mask how much harder it's become for average families to make ends meet.
America has never experienced such a disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street. Before 1980, total financial assets never exceeded twice the nation's GDP. That ratio has since exploded to 5.9:1. Globally, financial assets in the ten largest economies ballooned from $290 trillion in 2000 to $1,020 trillion in 2020-a quadrillion dollars. These benefits accrue primarily to asset holders and financial sector workers.
Policies favoring wealth redistribution from young to old have made financial security increasingly difficult for new generations. The ratio of median home value to median household income has nearly doubled from 2.5:1 (1960-1990) to over 4:1 by 2020. Home ownership peaked before the Great Recession at almost 70%, but has since declined as housing prices skyrocketed.
The greatest assault on middle-class prosperity may be the relentless inflation in higher education. Between 1980 and 2019, college costs increased 169% while earnings for young workers rose just 19%. Yet college is more necessary than ever-today 2 out of 3 jobs require postsecondary education, compared to just 1 in 4 in the 1970s.
For the first time in American history, young people are no longer better off than their parents were at the same age. Someone born in 1940 had a 92% chance of surpassing their parents economically; for someone born in 1970, that dropped to 61%. A millennial born in 1984 has just a 50% chance.
6장
The Attention Economy: How Social Media Rewired Our Society
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, calling it "revolutionary" and "changing everything." He was right. That same year, Facebook turned down a $900 million buyout from Yahoo!, and Twitter was just launching. Though the consumer internet began in the late 1990s, the real paradigm shift came with mobile and social media.
We started evaluating companies not by revenue but by users, and using free services where we weren't the customer but the product. By 2021, we spent 33% of our waking hours on phones (up from just 3% in 2010), with over half that time on social media. Companies like Alphabet (80% of revenue from ads) and Meta (98%) monetize our attention, together capturing over a third of all U.S. advertising revenue.
This shift happened within a decade, enabled by algorithms that discovered enraging content generates the most engagement-disturbing YouTube videos get 70% more views, falsehoods spread six times faster than truth on Twitter, and Facebook regularly refers users to untrustworthy news sources. The internet promised to unite us but has instead divided us into siloed echo chambers.
American Gen Zers unlock their phones nearly eighty times daily, and they're not alone. By 2012, half of American adults had smartphones; now almost half feel anxious without them. A staggering 96% of Gen Z Americans won't even use the bathroom without their phones. Daily phone use has increased 25% annually since 2010, with the average American now spending 4 hours and 23 minutes daily on mobile devices.
The explosion of screen time was fueled by an advertising business model that once seemed dubious: subsidizing algorithmic search engines that crawl through 37 trillion gigabytes of data to deliver personalized results in 0.2 seconds on tiny virtual billboards. What made this viable was scale. In 2011, digital ads represented just one-fifth of U.S. advertising revenue; now they drive 63%, turning advertising into a nearly $250 billion industry.
As Facebook and Google consumed our attention, we abandoned traditional media-particularly news. In 2008, U.S. newspapers generated $38 billion in ad revenue; by 2020, this had plummeted to less than $9 billion. This collapse decimated journalism: newsroom employment across all media channels fell 26% from 114,000 in 2008 to 85,000 in 2020.
As social media platforms proliferated, our attention spans continued to shrink. By 2014, 55% of website visits lasted less than fifteen seconds. For news outlets still dependent on ad revenue, this meant crafting headlines to maximize engagement. The internet allowed precise tracking of which content drove readership, revealing that virality correlates directly with emotion. A Wharton study found that emotional triggers dramatically increased an article's chances of making the most-emailed list: anxiety increased virality by 21%, awe by 30%, and anger-the most powerful emotion-by 34%.
The proliferation of lies on social media has bred widespread distrust, with over 70% of Americans believing these platforms censor political views. This suspicion runs deeper among Republicans (9 in 10) than Democrats (6 in 10). However, the real "censorship" has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with algorithms that favor engagement. Social media doesn't censor based on politics-it censors what bores us.
Despite violent crime rates steadily falling since the early 1990s, Americans persistently believe crime is increasing. In 20 of 24 Gallup surveys since 1993, at least 60% of adults thought there was more crime than the previous year. This perception gap stems from politicians' "tough on crime" rhetoric and media's sensationalist coverage.
7장
House of Cards: The Collapse of American Social Cohesion
Internal divisions have characterized America since its founding. Progress comes not from exploiting these fissures for private gain, but by uniting them through shared prosperity. The Surfside condo collapse in 2021, which killed 98 people after years of ignored warning signs, serves as a metaphor for our society's foundation.
Among these warning signs is a crisis emerging for young men. Despite privileged older white men wielding disproportionate control, many men are failing across education, economics, and socialization. Parents have higher educational expectations for girls, boys face twice the suspension rates for identical offenses, and men's college enrollment has plummeted to two-thirds that of women. This educational gap leads to limited professional opportunities, with non-college-educated men earning $900,000 less over their lifetimes than graduates.
Marriage rates in America hit an all-time low of 5.1 per 1,000 people in 2020-lower than during the Great Depression. This decline has been steepest among lower-income Americans, with men in the bottom third of incomes 30% less likely to marry since 1970, while rates for top-earning women actually increased. Marriage provides crucial economic, emotional, and logistical partnership. Unmarried parents earn just two-thirds what married couples do, while married people enjoy better health insurance, stronger social networks, longer lives, fewer strokes and heart attacks, and lower depression rates.
Over two-thirds of Americans consider it "very important" for men to financially support their families to be good partners. In stark contrast, only 25% of men and 39% of women believe financial security is very important for women to be good partners. This dramatic difference in expectations places significantly more economic pressure on men in relationships.
Dating apps sort potential partners into a tiny group of haves and a titanic group of have-nots. The most attractive people score the largest share of matches, while the vast majority receive very few. Using the Gini coefficient (which measures economic inequality), heterosexual females and males on Hinge showed indices of 0.38 and 0.54 respectively. If Hinge were an economy, it would rank among the most unequal places in the world.
Parents' political beliefs are increasingly affecting marriage rates. In 1960, only 1 in 25 parents had concerns about their child marrying someone from the opposite political party. By 2018, almost half of Democratic parents and a third of Republican parents expressed such concerns, showing how political divides have transformed into deep social divides.
With lower college enrollments, fewer pathways to economic security, and fewer intimate relationships forming, young adults have less impetus and means to leave home. The share of young adults living with parents reached its highest level on record in 2020 at 52%, surpassing even the previous peak during the Great Depression.
U.S. population growth is slowing dramatically. Between 2010 and 2020, the population grew just 7.4%, making it the decade with the slowest expansion in U.S. history. Unlike the temporary reduction during the Depression, this slowdown stems from fundamental transformations: Americans having fewer children, narrowed immigration gateways, and increasing "diseases of despair"-drug overdoses, obesity, and suicide.
Bored young men without pathways to economic security or meaningful relationships aren't just dangerous to themselves but to society. A U.S. Secret Service report revealed only 1 in 3 mass violent attackers in 2019 had mental illness symptoms, whereas 92% were male, and over two-thirds were under thirty-five. Men who fail to attach to a partner, career, or community grow bitter and seek volatility.
Americans have lost faith in their government. In 1958, about 75% trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. That percentage hasn't surpassed 30% since 2007. By 2021, 42% of Americans believed our political system needed complete overhaul, and another 43% said it required major changes.
8장
Global Threats and American Vulnerability: The Shifting Balance of Power
While America looks inward, a changing world may look elsewhere for leadership. Despite enjoying economic and military hegemony for decades, American supremacy is declining. The pandemic exposed our vulnerabilities-despite vast resources, we struggled with a virus while global peers saw lower death rates and less polarizing misinformation.
We're now in a bipolar world with China as the countervailing force. Though America still commands strategic high ground in finance, innovation, and military power, Chinese manufacturing dominates and its trade network growth outpaces ours. Meanwhile, climate change looms as our gravest threat-one of our own making-though it also presents the century's biggest economic opportunity in decarbonization.
America remains the globe's preeminent power despite its challenges. American enterprises dominate the world's largest companies, supporting unrivaled stock markets. Our R&D spending represents 30% of the world's total, with American startups accounting for 50% of global unicorns. The U.S. has more billionaires than any nation, has won more Olympic medals, and maintains a defense budget larger than the next ten countries combined.
The U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60% of global currency reserves, a privilege earned after World War II when America dominated industrial production. Under the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, America promised to convert dollars into gold at fixed rates, making the dollar the gold standard. When Nixon ended this convertibility in 1971, making the dollar a fiat currency, America gained the ability to export the consequences of currency devaluation abroad. As Treasury Secretary John Connally famously stated, "The dollar is our currency, but your problem."
Economic interdependence drives political influence, and China has overtaken America as the primary trading partner for most nations since 2000. Today, three times as many countries count China as their largest trade partner compared to the U.S. China's Belt and Road Initiative will only strengthen this trend, covering 71 countries representing over half the world's population and a third of global GDP.
While America's defense budget exceeds the combined spending of China, India, and Russia, accounting for over a third of global military expenditure, these raw numbers mask important disparities. When adjusted for military purchasing power parity (MPPP)-accounting for cheaper labor and equipment costs in other countries-China's effective military spending jumps from one-third to two-thirds of America's budget.
Despite America's enormous defense budget, its ability to project power effectively has diminished. After the USSR's fall, the U.S. could win conflicts without fighting, but now seems to fight everywhere without winning. The Afghanistan withdrawal demonstrated how a vastly outmatched opponent can prevail-if the U.S. defense budget were as tall as the Empire State Building, Afghanistan's entire GDP would only reach the height of the lampposts outside.
America's massive defense budget failed to protect against its greatest recent threat-a virus one four-hundredth the width of a human hair. The CDC operated with merely 1% of the defense budget to combat a pandemic that killed more Americans than all twentieth-century wars combined.
America's global reputation as a champion of democracy and freedom has dramatically declined. In 2000, approximately 80% of citizens in Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan viewed the U.S. favorably. By 2020, these numbers had plummeted due to controversial foreign policies and domestic turmoil. About 60% of citizens in developed nations now believe America used to be a good example of democracy but no longer is.
9장
Finding Our Way Forward: Rebuilding American Prosperity
Life is change, and stasis equals death. A healthy society remains vibrant and dynamic, generating innovation in every field. While much of this book chronicles how changes have hurt us, the dynamism unleashed in the 1980s had real upsides. The breakup of AT&T in 1984 created competition that spurred innovation and investment in telecommunications.
Throughout human history, even the darkest crises have eventually yielded new opportunities. The Black Plague, which killed one-third of Europe's population in just four years, ultimately led to higher per-capita income, increased urbanization, and economic revival. Researchers have dubbed plague, war, and urbanization "the three horsemen of riches" because they ultimately stimulate urban growth and economic activity over the long term.
Entering the workforce during a recession offers surprising benefits. Economic instability forces young people to recalibrate expectations and become more inquisitive about where real value lies-outlooks that increase job satisfaction. Research shows graduating amid average economic conditions versus the best conditions causes a 10% increase in job satisfaction, while graduating in the worst versus best conditions correlates with a 25% increase.
2021 saw 5.4 million new business applications-23% higher than 2020's record and 35% higher than 2019. The pandemic created ideal conditions for entrepreneurship: historic savings, government stimulus, record asset appreciation, and unprecedented consumer spending. A collective willingness emerged to question the status quo and embrace new products and services.
Immigrants start businesses at nearly double the rate of American-born citizens. In 2020, the new entrepreneur rate among immigrants was 0.59%, compared to native-born Americans. This entrepreneurial spirit has produced some of tech's most important companies, including Google, eBay, PayPal, and Tesla. The connection makes sense: people willing to risk moving to a new country may be more inclined to take business risks too.
America's future depends not on technology or environmental conditions but on human choices. We stand at a moment of extraordinary possibility, with more population, power, and connectivity than ever before. Though social media's changes feel momentous, we're only a decade into living online. The accelerating pace of change may ultimately work for us rather than against us, as demonstrated by Microsoft's evolution from dominant monopoly to one of many tech titans.
I'm often criticized for highlighting problems without proposing solutions. But these problems stem partly from failures of perception-successful people overestimate their contribution while society blames those dealt bad hands for lacking grit. Simply revealing the truth behind our unequal society is part of the solution.
We must simplify our tax code, which has ballooned from 409,000 words in 1955 to roughly 4 million today. While the wealthy employ experts to minimize their taxes, regular Americans lose billions of hours handling their taxes. We should revise the code with uniform definitions, eliminate itemized deductions for higher standard deductions, and end favorable treatment for income earned from assets.
Our regulatory systems need rebuilding-Amazon has more full-time lobbyists than there are U.S. senators, while regulatory bodies like the EPA have seen declining enforcement funding and staff since 2006. We must reinvest in fair, efficient enforcement to prevent monopolies from suppressing innovation and competition.
We need to reform Section 230, passed in 1996 when just 16% of Americans had internet access. Today, with over half the world's population using social media, the externalities have grown faster than revenue. Users face algorithms of enragement fostering contempt and polarization while teens suffer from depression and device addiction.
America leads the world in incarceration with 629 out of every 100,000 citizens behind bars-higher than authoritarian Cuba and twice Russia's rate. If the U.S. prison population were a city, it would be the nation's fifth-largest. We must re-evaluate sentencing for nonviolent offenses and implement re-entry programs that prepare released prisoners for successful reintegration.
Nearly 1 in 7 American children lived in poverty in 2019-unacceptable for history's richest nation. Investing in children through food, shelter, education, and hope is our best policy for future prosperity. The simplest solution is direct financial support: expanding the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 per child would almost halve child poverty and reduce racial inequities.
Without human connection, we accomplish nothing. Our society is suffering from disconnection-young Americans are having less sex, discourse has become coarse, and we increasingly view political opponents as mortal enemies. Institutions that once put us on the moon are now distrusted and defunded, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of ineffectiveness. The central compact of society has broken-thirty-year-olds aren't doing as well as their parents, while the old and rich manipulate policy to protect their wealth.
We are adrift but not lost. Recent events show promise-the Ukraine invasion brought new unity to the West, and the pandemic may yield scientific dividends that save millions from preventable deaths. We've seen child poverty nearly halved and acts of global solidarity. But reaching landfall requires focused investment and leadership. We must invest in younger Americans, re-embrace international cooperation, distinguish between competitors and enemies, and remember that above all, we are Americans. Landfall is visible-we just need to get there.
