To be completely honest GAK, large chunks of the globe owe much of their existance, much less their industrial or financial sucesses to the US and its ever expanding global interests.

In recent years, much of this expansion has come at a severe cost to the American middle class itself as more and more jobs have moved outside the US itself in cost cutting corporate operations often leaving the workers to seek lower wages, often in industries outside their areas of expertise, as they struggle to keep their familial ships afloat in light of disappearing/dwindling job markets.

At the same time, government on both the state and federal levels continue to expand, ever increasing the costs relevant to their survival with again "Joe the plumber" asked constantly to dig deeper into their pockets to help fund the ever growing tax burdens such expansion requires. Politicians are always quick to point to the federal income tax levels and cuts or increases as a major indicator of that tax burden, but will never discuss the myriad of NEW taxes or the incredibly Orwellian NEW SPEAK version of taxation they now call SERVICE CHARGES added every year for things that previously were tax free.

I happen to have a really good example of this sitting in front of me in the form of this months company cell phone service.
Monthly total for all services for our 2 phones: $82.99
Monthly total with taxes and service charges _ : $112.21
This puts the tax burden on a simple cell phone service at just a touch over 30%

Ok, so off that soap box and back on topic a bit

I lovingly call the area I live in "the land of the toothless sister lovers", and for good reason. We're an hour east of Big D (Dallas) in a lil burg of 1500 people or so and I can absolutely attest to a serious lacking of intellectual conversations to be had 'round these parts! If you're not well versed on the latest Tv phenom, yammerings about the weather, local football or town gossip you're not subject to find much to talk about with most of the folks here.

The overall dumbing down of America has lots of roots, with the simplest truth in it all being that people of lower IQs reproduce at higher rates than do others. Even this area of discussion is multi-faceted and has a long list of roots and eventual implications, so much so that a book could easliy be penned on the topic, but let me suffice to say .... you're much more likely to find households of 5+ in Billy Bob and Betty Sues neighborhood than you are where Bif and Buffy call home.

Man there's so much more I could write on this topic, it's incredible, but ...it's the weekend, I have lotsa "stuff to do" and figure I might as well let someone else chime in some other thoughts anyway, so