No country is perfect, not even America.
As a patriot who loves my country, I’m not too proud to admit her flaws. But a lot of us are.
Society ignores some of the biggest problems in America because they’re hard. We stick our heads in the sand, hoping they’ll disappear, but usually they only grow worse.
The Biggest Problems in America
I’m done ignoring them. I may not know how to solve any of these issues, but as they say, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.
And America, we have a problem. A lot of them, actually.
Here I’ve identified some of the biggest problems in America, in hopes that we can take those first baby steps towards finding a solution.
Lack of Community
Modern technology lets us chat at the click of a button. But in a cruel twist, our interconnected world makes us more disconnected than ever. We hide in our homes, engaging in an online world while ignoring our closest neighbors.
The internet may have opened new worlds of connectivity, but it destroyed the essence of community that humans relied on for millennia.
And that’s a problem.
It’s a brave new world, one that we don’t really have the skills to navigate. Our lack of community leads to loneliness, which leads to hopelessness.
It’s also partly to blame for another massive problem…
Lack of Empathy
Our isolation drained people of empathy.
When we don’t connect with people on a human level, we don’t care about them. We struggle to put ourselves in their shoes, to understand their perspectives, and to appreciate their point of view.
Lack of empathy leads to a whole host of problems. We refuse to even entertain the idea that their lived experiences are different than ours, which leads to poor treatment of those we deem “beneath us”.
At an extreme, the end result is dehumanization, and we should all be terrified of where that can lead.
Toxic Individualism
Americans celebrate rugged individualism, ignoring that our ability to collaborate and build communities brought us where we are today.
Toxic individualism tells us we can do everything on our own without help from friends, relatives, or society as a whole. It’s as harmful as it is untrue, as everyone depends on someone else in some way for survival.
If we’re not careful, we’ll let our own egos destroy humanity.
Money in Politics
America’s oligarchy runs on cash. We’ve developed a system where those who raise the most money win elections rather than the best qualified.
To make our country great again, we must get money entirely out of politics. Giant corporations shouldn’t be able to buy elections or politicians. Lobbying should be illegal.
In addition, we need to fight corruption. No congressperson or president should be able to make millions (or billions) of dollars while in office. They shouldn’t get to make deals that enrich themselves or their families and shouldn’t be allowed to make laws that impact their stock portfolios.
The founding fathers never intended the system to become corrupted this way. The government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The fact that it’s not is one of the biggest problems in America.
Profits Before People
Our society cares more about profits than people.
The for-profit healthcare system, school system, and even prison system all work against the populace and for the giant corporations who make more money when people are sick or imprisoned.
Now look, I understand that capitalism needs a profit motive. I’ve read Why Nations Fail and get that you can’t extract all the wealth from innovation and expect a country to succeed.
But corporations can be extractive too. We’ve allowed them to get so powerful that they’re stomping all over us.
We need common-sense restraints on capitalism, like not allowing corporations to violate human rights for the sake of profits.
AI and Automation
The threat of automation is one of the biggest problems facing America today, but it’s so new that a lot of us are ignoring it.
We’ve only scratched the surface of AI’s possibilities. We have no idea what the future of AI holds; it could become a helpful companion, but it could also destroy society as we know it.
Advances in AI are already putting Americans out of work, and it will only worsen as technology improves.
A good society would use this as an opportunity to institute a UBI and allow people to pursue their passions without worrying about working, but our dystopian nightmare will probably force people into poverty instead.
Social Media
People have a love/hate relationship with social media. We know it’s a toxic hive of misinformation and hatred, but we can’t seem to pull away.
I guess the problem isn’t social media itself, but the way it’s used. Propaganda bots spread lies like wildfire. People read a headline on Facebook and share it without thinking critically about whether the claims could be valid.
Social media was great when it was just friends sharing food and travel pictures. Now, it’s turned into a cesspool of scum and villainy, yet we all still doomscroll.
Propaganda Everywhere
Propaganda surrounds us. It attempts to sway our thinking in both mundane and critical ways. You can find examples of propaganda nearly everywhere.
The worst part is that most of us don’t even see it for what it is. We don’t realize that someone is always trying to sway our opinion. We don’t notice that half the content online is from bot farms hoping to influence us.
The fact that propaganda has penetrated every aspect of our lives is a huge and growing problem in America, but that we lack the critical thinking skills to realize it is probably worse.
Child Abuse
Everyone says we need to end child abuse, but no one does anything about it. And unfortunately, it’s far more common than anyone would like to believe.
America is the only developed country that hasn’t ratified the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which codifies basic human rights for children into international law.
And our country has a massive problem with child abuse. Approximately five kids die every day due to abuse, and abused kids are 11 times more likely to engage in criminal activity as adults.
People also abuse their kids by brainwashing them into religions, kicking them out for opposing views, restricting their access to education, and neglecting their psychological needs, but we rarely even discuss these actions as “abuse.”
We can not hope to improve as a nation if we allow parents to restrict their children’s education, growth, health, and development.
Addiction
America is facing an addiction crisis. Millions of people struggle with addiction.
Instead of treating addiction like the mental health crisis it is, we stuff an already overburdened prison system with people who need medical attention.
And it’s not just hard drugs, though that’s a huge part of it.
Alcohol addiction runs rampant too. Most people enjoy a few beers on the weekend without a problem. But we ignore the catastrophic social and health effects of alcohol, allowing anyone to freely buy it as long as they’re of legal age.
Failing Education
An educated populace is the key to a prosperous country. Europe knows it and makes university affordable for all its citizens.
The US has a barely functioning K-12 system that gets worse by the day as governments strip funding and refuse to offer teachers competitive salaries.
Our refusal to fund education is one of the biggest problems in America, but it’s even worse than that.
We HATE education.
As evidenced by…
Anti-Intellectualism
The failing education system is by design.
We could fund schools and teach all children if we wanted to. Unfortunately, a large subset of American society hates education and fights tooth and nail to keep their kids ignorant.
They don’t want to know the US’s true, sordid history or the nuance behind scientific research. They also boast about their stupidity and make outrageous claims that their “opinion” is just as valid as a scientist’s opinion with decades of experience.
The massive distrust of education won’t end well for us.
An Aging Population
As the boomer generation ages, Social Security funds will get pushed to their limits. The healthcare system will get overburdened as more people need medical care than it can provide.
Meanwhile, the younger generations don’t make enough money to fund Social Security and Medicare, meaning the resources will get stretched even thinner.
Politicians could solve all these problems, but it would require making tough choices that nobody wants, so they ignore it.
These aging chickens will eventually come home to roost.
Long-Term Care Facilities
Some of those chickens roost in long-term care facilities, or as I like to call them, prisons for an aging population.
These places are horrific, yet we fear death on such a massive scale that we’d rather have our relatives live in a vegetative state for years than let them pass gracefully. And it’s not like we’re visiting them either.
People in long-term care facilities are stuck, barely alive, and all alone.
It’s a problem for two reasons. First, we’re ignoring the human dignity of the people we shove into these facilities. Conditions are usually horrible. The staff is overworked and underpaid.
But it’s also a massive wealth transfer from an aging population to greedy corporations. They want you to keep grandma alive for as long as it takes for them to extract every penny of her wealth.
It’s a disgusting practice if you think about it.
Bad Food
American diets burst with high fructose corn syrup and preservatives.
We eat junk. We consume poison.
The corporations love it and keep making horrible food filled with stuff we crave, so we keep buying it and eating ourselves to early graves.
The healthcare system also loves it, as the constantly sick populace seeks medical cures for their ailments.
Do the people love it? A casual glance at shopping carts probably makes you think they do, so we all pretend that eating unhealthy food is a personal choice rather than a systematic problem.
That we, we don’t have to do any work to solve it.
A Toxic Work Culture
We need to work, but does it have to be so awful?
America’s toxic work culture is actively destroying us. We work long hours for paltry wages, can’t take time off when we’re sick, and have little to no vacation time.
On top of that, we must survive long commutes (because god forbid we work from home or have cheap housing near work!) and toil under horrible managers who delight in making our lives as miserable as possible.
Poverty
We often think of third-world countries when we talk about poverty, but it’s thriving right here in the US, where homelessness rose 6% in the last five years.
It’s one of the biggest problems in America that we’d all prefer to ignore.
The truth is, there is a poverty trap right here in America. Our systems lead to generational poverty.
And it’s by design.
We could easily solve a lot of the issues that lead to poverty, but we don’t. We could fund education to help lift people out, or we could fund healthcare to prevent folks from sliding in, but we don’t do any of that.
Our policies keep people trapped in holes they can never hope to escape, and most of us just shrug our shoulders about it.
Health Care Crisis
America is facing a massive healthcare crisis. It’s not just that we’re sick (see the poison food above); it’s that we can’t afford to access the healthcare we need.
Medical bills are the top cause of bankruptcy in the US. We all pay outrageous amounts for health insurance that doesn’t even cover us when things go wrong.
Yet we refuse to do what every single other developed country in the world has done: create a universal healthcare program.
Instead, Americans blissfully ignore the possibility that one day, they could face a serious health issue. We refuse to increase taxes even a penny (while simultaneously lowering our insurance costs, effectively saving us money) to pay for healthcare for everyone.
The problem will get worse and worse as the country ages; hopefully it won’t be too late to find a solution.
Mental Health Care
At least most Americans can acknowledge that our healthcare system is broken, though we can’t agree on how to fix it.
One of America’s other biggest problems relates to mental health, a problem we’re far more comfortable ignoring.
More and more people suffer from anxiety, depression, and other disorders, and due to the lack of affordable healthcare, they can’t get the help they need.
The mental health crisis feeds the addiction crisis, and we’re not doing anything to fix either.
Decreasing Standard of Living
Vitaliy Abbasov via Shutterstock.com.
The Millennial generation is the first generation to have a lower standard of living than their parents. They can’t afford to have kids or buy houses to raise them in.
And inflation is only getting worse. Gen Z can’t even afford to rent. What will Gen Alpha face?
We don’t know, but we do know that the slowly eroding standard of living is one of the biggest problems in America. At some point, people will no longer be okay with less and less.
It would be far better for us to resolve the issue now than to wait and see what happens when Gen Bravo decides their standard of living is so low that they’ve got nothing left to lose.
Climate Change
We’re on the brink of an enormous climate disaster. Climate change is already impacting Americans.
Hurricanes are getting more powerful, lasting longer, and traveling further up the coast. Wildfires are burning more and more forests. Droughts are lasting longer, while floods are becoming more common.
Some folks in the South can no longer afford to insure their homes against the annual tirade of the raging sea.
People are literally dying in “once in a lifetime” events that now happen every year.
Our refusal to act will only make things worse in the long run.
Think Tanks
We assume that the person we elect to Congress will make our laws, but that’s not always the case.
Instead, our congresspeople rely on think tanks, biased organizations funded by big money who love to write “policy ideas” for our elected officials.
The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation gave us gems like the Dobbs decision and authored a manifesto about their political goals for 2025.
Think tanks like this are the true shadow government we should fear. Yet, many people let them pull our elected leader’s puppet strings like it’s nothing.
Religion in Politics
Our founding fathers wrote the First Amendment to the Constitution to guarantee a separation of church and state for a reason: religion and politics should not mix.
The law should treat everyone with dignity and respect regardless of their beliefs (or lack thereof). Our laws should be written from an ethical perspective, not a religious one. A religious institution’s teachings should not be the basis for any law.
When the two mix, atrocities tend to follow.
Unfortunately, a huge portion of the US population doesn’t understand history enough to get why religion and politics need to stay apart. They vote to make their God the supreme ruler of the country, not realizing (or caring) that
- A. their god isn’t everyone’s god
- B. their morals aren’t universal (and sometimes, they’re actively unethical), and
- C. that powerful people use religion as a tool to subjugate the masses.
There are so many more reasons why we need to keep religion out of politics, but the fact that so many people vote a certain way because “god” is one of the biggest problems in America.
So Many Problems
Although I’m going to end my list here, I acknowledge that I probably barely scratched the surface.
There are a lot of problems in the US. Some of the problems transcend borders, others are more societal problems than political ones. Every country has its share of similar (or worse) issues.
The thing that makes us great is our ability to see the problem, recognize it, and say “hey, that’s wrong – we can do better!”
I only hope we can achieve that with the problems addressed here.