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Is America becoming a failed state?

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Faced with Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election, economist Paul Krugman wonders if the Democratic candidate will be able to run the country and whether the US is becoming “a failed state.”

According to reports, Biden has already got the votes needed to become the country’s new president. The Democratic nominee himself announced on Twitter that “it is an honor to be elected to lead the United States.”

However, the Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman warned in his article for The New York Times that the US could become “a failed state” because he doubts that Joe Biden has a chance to govern.

“There are real questions as to whether he will indeed be able to govern. Right now, there is a possibility that the Senate will remain in the hands of an extremist party that will sabotage Biden in every possible way”

he says in his post.


Krugman highlighted “how unrepresentative” the U.S. Senate is.

“Of course there are two senators per state, which means Wyoming’s 579,000 residents outweigh California’s 39 million residents. The states with the most weight tend to be much less urbanized than the nation as a whole and the growing political divide between metropolitan and rural areas, this gives the Senate a strong tilt to the right.”

The Senate’s right-wing bias, according to Krugman, is “the main reason the Republican Party is likely to retain control despite a Democratic victory” in the presidential election.

The economist explained why divided government control is “such a big problem” for the US.

“We desperately need a new round of federal spending on healthcare, help for the unemployed and businesses, and support for struggling state and local governments. Reasonable estimates suggest we should spend $ 200 billion or more each month until some vaccine end the pandemic. I would be surprised if a Senate still controlled by Mitch McConnell would agree to do something like that.”

Even after the pandemic ends, the US is likely to face “persistent economic weakness and a desperate need for more public investment,” Krugman warned. 

“McConnell effectively blocked infrastructure spending even with Donald Trump in the White House. Why would he become more condescending with Biden in office?” He asked.

The economist confessed that he has “the role that a strongly partisan Supreme Court can play.” “Six of the nine judges were elected by a party that has won the popular vote only once in the last eight elections.”

“And I think there is a significant possibility that this court will behave like the Supreme Court in the 1930s, which did not stop blocking New Deal programs until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt threatened to add seats, something that Biden couldn’t do with a Republican-controlled Senate”

said Paul Krugman

The analyst warned that the country is facing a serious problem.

“If we were before a foreign country with the level of political dysfunction of the United States, perhaps we would consider that it is on the verge of becoming a failed state, that is, a state whose government is no longer capable of exercising effective control”

he concluded.

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