It's almost the 4th of July, and instead of hearing about how awesome it is, all I hear is the economy problem.
There are several ways we could fix all this, and no one seems to be doing anything about it (at least not yet; GO OBAMA! WHOO!).

The first problem I have: Weed.
Remember back in the good old days, when everyone HAD to grow hemp? Yeah, that's right. Marijuana was not only legal, but you HAD to grow some. That was when America was badass and destroyed the British- an old, powerful nation. That's like a baby stabbin' its muscley daddy.
Now, we can't even stop a bunch of sheet-wearing 10 year olds.
What the hell, America? What the hell?
If we were to legalize it for 18+, make it pretty inexpensive and accessible, but place a small tax on it... Think of how much of a dent we could potentially make in the, oh, 70 gazillion dollars of debt we are in.
That, and we'd be a slightly more free country, and teenagers could rejoice that they'll make it to work on time and not be pulled over by an asshole cop that feels the need to search their car from top to bottom, simply because they're a teenager driving on a backroad.
It happens so often.

Another thing that pisses me off: Alcohol.
A kid at the age of 18 can go to a place where no one speaks English, health care is shitty, and fuckin' DIE for their country, but can't legally sit back and enjoy a cold brew with their dad if/when they comes back for whatever reason.
If we lowered the drinking age to 18 (like most other countries- in fact, in most places, it's 16 or under), not only would it probably curb a lot of the hype of being able to illegally GET it in the longrun (because in our culture now, it's become cool if you can steal it from your parents or your older sibling), it would potentially create more responsibility with it.
Maybe the number of drunk driving accidents would increase for a little while, but they would go down eventually, once kids learned. After they bought a bunch of alcohol, which should be taxed a little. They'll learn. Like they used to, and they do in other countries that have had that law for a while.
Besides, it might be good for America to shed some problem teens that don't listen to everything around them that says "DON'T DO IT." Darwinism should apply to humans. There's too friggin' many of us, now.

America's fear of death.
Remember when dying was sad, but happened a lot more frequently, but people accepted it? Now, we're so afraid of death that we have all these crazy 'medicines' that defy nature and only put off the inevidable.
I know that's very cynical of me, but think about it... People are living to be older and older. More and more people are living longer and having babies, and multiplying. More and more people are covering this planet and killing everything else, because something doesn't come from nothing. The planet has the same amount of everything it started with.
The water coming from your sink was dinosaur piss at one point. That coffee cup was once sand on a beach somewhere, where it came from dead sea animals and weathering rock.
Everything comes from something. It doesn't just magically appear. Americans don't seem to realize that, today.
Everything dies to become a part of something else. But if there are so many humans taking up so much water and carbon... you see the problem. There can be no new life if nothing's dying.
Part of the reason we're running out of 'drinking water' is probably because of the population. People are water.
It'd do us some good to calm down a little bit about death and let old people die.

Another: Kids today, because of adults today.
When our parents were our age, unprotected sex and drugs ran rampant. Now that they're old, they don't want to imagine their kids doing any of the crazy shit they did, so they shield them. I'm staring at the face of every Newburyport mom at this very moment.
Kids today are too shielded. And they're spoiled (I'll get to that in a minute).
They don't go outside and play, or get dirty, so their immune systems SUCK. ASS. They sit in front of their videogames munching the shitty products the previous generation made for us, from cheap chemical SHIT, just because it was cheap and they want their product to sit on shelves because it's too expensive to just keep up production and create jobs. No sir.
And some kids know this. They're mad that their dads and granddads won't let them live and learn for themselves.
That might have something to do with why kids are so disrespectful, today. Their parents tell them they can't be themselves, and they resent them for that and act out.
That, and it's become cool in our society for kids to be assholes and wear their pants so low, and their skirts so short.
Kids are oversexed, thanks to our culture. American culture tells the American girl she has to be pretty, can't have acne, can't be overweight, and has to have bigger boobs... And all the girls that don't don't have any friends.
Let me tell you something, folks. I'm not that pretty of a girl, and I have plenty of friends. This is because there are intelligent teenagers and young adults out there that realize it's not important to be sexy all the time. That's exhausting and expensive and unnecissary.
I see little girls running around in makeup and I want to hit their parents. These girls haven't even had their period yet.
These girls shouldn't even be THINKING about how they look; they should be having fun and learning about the world around them, like they used to.
But no. They go the the grocery store (or any store for that matter) with their parents (to buy more chemicals, no doubt) and see all these fucking magazines... All these gorgeous, skinny women in pretty clothes. All these shiny, thick magazines full of "HOW TO PLEASE YOUR MAN!" and "HOW TO BE SEXY THIS SPRING!"... and for all the weird kids like myself, "MAN SHOOTS AN ANGEL!"... but that one isn't nearly as bad (unless your kid has an overactive imagination and it gives them nightmares).
It's not that they're unintentionally exposing children to the idea of sex at far too young of an age, as some old balding white men in places of power say. History shows us that some were exposed at far younger ages and did just fine. Look at Japan. They have used panty and porn vending machines. They have guys running around in penis costumes.
Come on.
It's just that America's introducing it in a way that demotes and degrades them and makes them feel fuckin' AWFUL about themselves, without EVER mentioning how you're supposed to love someone in order to do any of the AWFUL things in that magazine with/to them. It just makes them feel they aren't good enough unless they look like Heidi Klum, or that lady Gisele. And in order to do that, they HAVE to buy this dress. Or THIS perfume. Or THIS kind of makeup.
So they get these FUCKING magazines that all say the same thing (I flipped through Cosmo and Ok and several others out of curiousity; they were in the drama room for some reason... they're all the same) when they're older, continuing their production, and continuing the cycle.
They don't care about what they can DO, now. They don't go for the little pamphlets full of awesome looking, healthy food RIGHT above those magazines (where kids can't even see/reach them). They go for the eye-level-with-them, bright colored, glamour-filled SHIT.
They care about what they LOOK like.
Thus, parents neglect the need to teach kids life skills while they're young, like cooking and cleaning... because they themselves don't know how. Remember when Easy Bake Ovens were THE COOLEST THING EVER? Now it's those fuckin' Bratz dolls. Remember when kids actually made themselves a sandwich or had cereal because they were hungry, and didn't go straight for the easy thing (poptarts/chips)?
That might be why Americans have a weight problem. They don't know how to cook anymore. There are too many restaurants that offer convenient, unhealthy, cheap food. And they're EVERYWHERE.
Why is this happening? Why don't Americans know how to take care of themselves anymore?

Idiots having children. That's why.
There should be a parenthood test.
You have to pass a test to get out of high school, get a car, get out of college.... Why not have one before you create another FRIGGING human being? If we instated this, think of the possibility of a decreased crime rate. An accident baby that will grow up in a troubled home, or a child birthed by drug addicts, or a child born to children that aren't ready... Think about it. Watch the news.
Darwinism.

People don't know how to use their money.
They're living beyond their means.
They have to buy expensive things to keep up with the times...
They're spoiling their children with all these electronics that they're far too young to even comprehend how they work... Before they even know the value of money... Thus, continuing the fucking cycle of poor money management!
Why?
Because their parents knew how to manage their money and didn't buy them things they didn't need. And they want to give their kids things they didn't have. They want to raise their kids the way they wish they'd been raised, dammit!
Instead of saving their money and putting it away in a savings account where it can accumulate interest, they're blowing it on things they don't need when they obviously can't afford it.
They're spending it on cigarettes (WAY different/more expensive than weed; these are actually bad for you and can/will actually kill you) when they can barely stock their cupboards with food.
They're blowing it on a fancy car that has bad gas mileage.
They're using their credit card in ways that doesn't benefit them, but hurts them.
It needs to stop. People need to learn, but there's no one to teach them!

America's infrastructure.
Don't know if you've noticed, but our bridges, etc are in bad shape.
Why? Because America's an aging 'young' country and doesn't know how to deal with it. It seems we have't even begun thinking about repairing all the things our great-great-grandpappy built for us to use and live in.
Another flashback to early America, back when it had balls: Remember when everyone had a job to do, because there were things that needed to be done/built?
Anyone familiar with the big dig? Yeah. That's because nobody knows how to build shit anymore.
Why?
Because that's not valued in our society anymore. No one cares about being an architect or a construction guy. Construction guys aren't sexy anymore. They used to be. They used to be downright hunky. Now, they're portrayed as chubby hairy guys whose pants don't fit properly. They're protrayed as rude assholes that whistle at women all the time from high above, and heckle people from above because there's nothing the people below can do.
Kids today don't want to grow up to fix things. They want to make new things and save people like House and that guy on Grey's Anatomy, because being a doctor is sexy today. And kids want to be sexy. They all want to go into bio-med and stop old people that run kids over from dying so they can continue to to accidentally kill people.

America's driving laws.
I don't remember hearing anything about old people getting into wrecks 50 years ago. 50 years ago, they wouldn't get to be that age. 50 years ago, they would've died from lung cancer or what-have-you because of all the ads telling us how delicious cigarettes and alcohol are. Because the drinking age was 21 then, too, and those things were cool to illegally get a hold of.
There's a minimum age limit to when you can drive. Make a fuckin' maximum age limit.
The only reason this hasn't happened yet is because the younger generation that was birthed by this older generation is too fuckin lazy/busy to drive their geriatric parent to the grocery store.

Robots.
Even though they're cool, they're doing jobs that humans can easily do and be paid for.
America needs to stop its bitching that it can't find jobs for people and kick out some of the fuckin' robots, at least for now. It's debatably cheaper. You still have to buy the damned robot, and a guy who knows how to fix it if it breaks, and replacement parts, and update it now and then... Why not just hire a guy who knows what he's doing that you can pay 20 bucks an hour and be done with it?

Buying Chinese.
They produce things so much cheaper than American companies do. And they have cooler shit. And there's so much of this shit because there are so many fucking Chinese people.
So people buy from China. Look around you. Do you see anything that doesn't say "Made In China" on it? Compare that number of items to how many say "Made in America" on them.
That should prove my point.
What's America doing right now? Failing... And what's China doing right now? Booming.
If only Americans would buy the slightly more expensive American product than that cheaper Chinese product... Keep the money in the country... Things might fix themselves.
Back when America was off to a good start, people bought American. Because that's really all we had.
So stop giving your money to China, who's doing just fine, and buy American, so we can have money to produce more things, so we can buy more things, and spread the money around.
Because that's the way money works.


To be continued.