I earn 5-10X what I did when I lived in the UK, but my quality of life is markedly worse. My whole thing boils down to: how can America have the same standard of living I grew up with?

For a lot of people, the idea of prosperity boils down to, “I can buy what I want,” not, “I can live how I want.” The latter is the one that matters: that’s what freedom actually is.

National healthcare works (or does when it’s not being dismantled for profit). Integrated public transit works. Welfare works. Gun control works. All of this stuff makes for a better life: one where you don’t need to worry about things going wrong because you’ll know you can get back on your feet. Where you can experiment with your life knowing it’s not catastrophic.

Here the base cost of living is dramatically higher. If something goes wrong, there’s nothing to catch you. People have weapons in their homes. They’re far more religious but much less likely to help each other. You need to own a car to do much of anything. There aren’t really nationalized services — particularly now — and the commercial ones don’t work together well, aren’t as good, and cost a fortune.

The only reason I can think of that people would accept this is that they’re taught to believe that this is the best country in the world. It’s like a religion in itself; there’s absolutely no basis for it. There are wonderful people here, many of whom are doing wonderful things, but there’s so much work to do to make the experience living here competitive with other developed nations. If you love having to get into your truck to go to the box store to get your expensive, homogenous groceries for the week, and if you love the extractive experience of your health insurance provider, you do you, but I think these things are a kind of hell.

And obviously this is particularly true now, under an increasingly fascist government that’s stripping away the few services we actually had. The people in charge want to return us to traditional gender roles, make people have more babies, and, for many of them, enforce a common religion. That, to me, is the opposite of prosperity. These things are disgusting, in a place that was already doing badly.

We’re going in the wrong direction. Can it be saved?